It was at the commencement of this period of intellectual fermentation, that the last of the Omeyades, escaping into Spain, established there the kingdom of Cordova, and imported along with him the fondness for luxury and letters that had begun to display itself in the capitals of the east. His munificent spirit descended upon his successors; and, on the breaking up of the empire, the various capitals, Seville, Murcia, Malaga, Granada, and others, which rose upon its ruins, became the centres of so many intellectual systems, that continued to emit a steady lustre through the clouds and darkness of succeeding centuries. The period of this literary civilization reached far into the fourteenth century, and thus, embracing an interval of six hundred years, may be said to have exceeded in duration that of any other literature, ancient or modern.

There were several auspicious circumstances in the condition of the Spanish Arabs, which distinguished them from their Mahometan brethren. The temperate climate of Spain was far more propitious to robustness and elasticity of intellect than the sultry regions of Arabia and Africa. Its long line of coast and convenient havens opened to it an enlarged commerce. Its number of rival states encouraged a generous emulation, like that which glowed in ancient Greece and modern Italy; and was infinitely more favorable to the development of the mental powers than the far- extended and sluggish empires of Asia. Lastly, a familiar intercourse with the Europeans served to mitigate in the Spanish Arabs some of the more degrading superstitions incident to their religion, and to impart to them nobler ideas of the independence and moral dignity of man, than are to be found in the slaves of eastern despotism.

Under these favorable circumstances, provisions for education were liberally multiplied, colleges, academies, and gymnasiums springing up spontaneously, as it were, not merely in the principal cities, but in the most obscure villages of the country. No less than fifty of these colleges or schools could be discerned scattered over the suburbs and populous plain of Granada. Seventy public libraries, if we may credit the report, were counted within the narrow limits of the Moslem territory. Every place of note seems to have furnished materials for a literary history. The copious catalogues of writers, still extant in the Escurial, show how extensively the cultivation of science was pursued, even through its minutest subdivisions; while a biographical notice of blind men, eminent for their scholarship in Spain, proves how far the general avidity for knowledge triumphed over the most discouraging obstacles of nature. [38]

The Spanish Arabs emulated their countrymen of the east in their devotion to natural and mathematical science. They penetrated into the remotest regions of Africa and Asia, transmitting an exact account of their proceedings to the national academies. They contributed to astronomical knowledge by the number and accuracy of their observations, and by the improvement of instruments and the erection of observatories, of which the noble tower of Seville is one of the earliest examples. They furnished their full proportion in the department of history, which, according to an Arabian author cited by D'Herbelot, could boast of thirteen hundred writers. The treatises on logic and metaphysics amount to one-ninth of the surviving treasures of the Escurial; and, to conclude this summary of naked details, some of their scholars appear to have entered upon as various a field of philosophical inquiry, as would be crowded into a modern encyclopaedia. [39]

The results, it must be confessed, do not appear to have corresponded with this magnificent apparatus and unrivalled activity of research. The mind of the Arabians was distinguished by the most opposite characteristics, which sometimes, indeed, served to neutralize each other. An acute and subtile perception was often clouded by mysticism and abstraction. They combined a habit of classification and generalization, with a marvellous fondness for detail; a vivacious fancy with a patience of application, that a German of our day might envy; and, while in fiction they launched boldly into originality, indeed extravagance, they were content in philosophy to tread servilely in the track of their ancient masters. They derived their science from versions of the Greek philosophers; but, as their previous discipline had not prepared them for its reception, they were oppressed rather than stimulated by the weight of the inheritance. They possessed an indefinite power of accumulation, but they rarely ascended to general principles, or struck out new and important truths; at least, this is certain in regard to their metaphysical labors.

Hence Aristotle, who taught them to arrange what they had already acquired, rather than to advance to new discoveries, became the god of their idolatry. They piled commentary on commentary, and, in their blind admiration of his system, may be almost said to have been more of Peripatetics than the Stagirite himself. The Cordovan Averroes was the most eminent of his Arabian commentators, and undoubtedly contributed more than any other individual to establish the authority of Aristotle over the reason of mankind for so many ages. Yet his various illustrations have served, in the opinion of European critics, to darken rather than dissipate the ambiguities of his original, and have even led to the confident assertion that he was wholly unacquainted with the Greek language. [40]

The Saracens gave an entirely new face to pharmacy and chemistry. They introduced a great variety of salutary medicaments into Europe. The Spanish Arabs, in particular, are commended by Sprengel above their brethren for their observations on the practice of medicine. [41] But whatever real knowledge they possessed was corrupted by their inveterate propensity for mystical and occult science. They too often exhausted both health and fortune in fruitless researches after the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone. Their medical prescriptions were regulated by the aspect of the stars. Their physics were debased by magic, their chemistry degenerated into alchemy, their astronomy into astrology.

In the fruitful field of history, their success was even more equivocal. They seem to have been wholly destitute of the philosophical spirit, which gives life to this kind of composition. They were the disciples of fatalism and the subjects of a despotic government. Man appeared to them only in the contrasted aspects of slave and master. What could they know of the finer moral relations, or of the higher energies of the soul, which are developed only under free and beneficent institutions? Even could they have formed conceptions of these, how would they have dared to express them? Hence their histories are too often mere barren chronological details, or fulsome panegyrics on their princes, unenlivened by a single spark of philosophy or criticism.

Although the Spanish Arabs are not entitled to the credit of having wrought any important revolution in intellectual or moral science, they are commended by a severe critic, as exhibiting in their writings "the germs of many theories, which have been reproduced as discoveries in later ages," [42] and they silently perfected several of those useful arts, which have had a sensible influence on the happiness and improvement of mankind. Algebra and the higher mathematics were taught in their schools, and thence diffused over Europe. The manufacture of paper, which, since the invention of printing, has contributed so essentially to the rapid circulation of knowledge, was derived through them. Casiri has discovered several manuscripts of cotton paper in the Escurial as early as 1009, and of linen paper of the date of 1106; [43] the origin of which latter fabric Tiraboschi has ascribed to an Italian of Trevigi, in the middle of the fourteenth century. [44] Lastly, the application of gunpowder to military science, which has wrought an equally important revolution, though of a more doubtful complexion, in the condition of society, was derived through the same channel. [45]

The influence of the Spanish Arabs, however, is discernible not so much in the amount of knowledge, as in the impulse, which they communicated to the long-dormant energies of Europe. Their invasion was coeval with the commencement of that night of darkness, which divides the modern from the ancient world. The soil had been impoverished by long, assiduous cultivation. The Arabians came like a torrent, sweeping down and obliterating even the land-marks of former civilization, but bringing with it a fertilizing principle, which, as the waters receded, gave new life and loveliness to the landscape. The writings of the Saracens were translated and diffused throughout Europe. Their schools were visited by disciples, who, roused from their lethargy, caught somewhat of the generous enthusiasm of their masters; and a healthful action was given to the European intellect, which, however ill-directed at first, was thus prepared for the more judicious and successful efforts of later times.

It is comparatively easy to determine the value of the scientific labors of a people, for truth is the same in all languages; but the laws of taste differ so widely in different nations, that it requires a nicer discrimination to pronounce fairly upon such works as are regulated by them. Nothing is more common than to see the poetry of the east condemned as tumid, over-refined, infected with meretricious ornament and conceits, and, in short, as every way contravening the principles of good taste. Few of the critics, who thus peremptorily condemn, are capable of reading a line of the original. The merit of poetry, however, consists so much in its literary execution, that a person, to pronounce upon it, should be intimately acquainted with the whole import of the idiom in which it is written. The style of poetry, indeed of all ornamental writing, whether prose or verse, in order to produce a proper effect, must be raised or relieved, as it were, upon the prevailing style of social intercourse. Even where this is highly figurative and impassioned, as with the Arabians, whose ordinary language is made up of metaphor, that of the poet must be still more so. Hence the tone of elegant literature varies so widely in different countries, even in those of Europe, which approach the nearest to each other in their principles of taste, that it would be found extremely difficult to effect a close translation of the most admired specimens of eloquence from the language of one nation into that of any other. A page of Boccaccio or Bembo, for instance, done into literal English, would have an air of intolerable artifice and verbiage. The choicest morsels of Massillon, Bossuet, or the rhetorical Thomas, would savor marvellously of bombast; and how could we in any degree keep pace with the magnificent march of the Castilian! Yet surely we are not to impugn the taste of all these nations, who attach much more importance, and have paid (at least this is true of the French and Italian) much greater attention to the mere beauties of literary finish, than English writers.

Whatever may be the sins of the Arabians on this head, they are certainly not those of negligence. The Spanish Arabs, in particular, were noted for the purity and elegance of their idiom; insomuch that Casiri affects to determine the locality of an author by the superior refinement of his style. Their copious philological and rhetorical treatises, their arts of poetry, grammars, and rhyming dictionaries, show to what an excessive refinement they elaborated the art of composition. Academies, far more numerous than those of Italy, to which they subsequently served for a model, invited by their premiums frequent competitions in poetry and eloquence. To poetry, indeed, especially of the tender kind, the Spanish Arabs seem to have been as indiscriminately addicted as the Italians in the time of Petrarch; and there was scarcely a doctor in church or state, but at some time or other offered up his amorous incense on the altar of the muse. [46]

With all this poetic feeling, however, the Arabs never availed themselves of the treasures of Grecian eloquence, which lay open before them. Not a poet or orator of any eminence in that language seems to have been translated by them. [47] The temperate tone of Attic composition appeared tame to the fervid conceptions of the east. Neither did they venture upon what in Europe are considered the higher walks of the art, the drama and the epic. [48] None of their writers in prose or verse show much attention to the development or dissection of character. Their inspiration exhaled in lyrical effusions, in elegies, epigrams, and idyls. They sometimes, moreover, like the Italians, employed verse as the vehicle of instruction in the grave and recondite sciences. The general character of their poetry is bold, florid, impassioned, richly colored with imagery, sparkling with conceits and metaphors, and occasionally breathing a deep tone of moral sensibility, as in some of the plaintive effusions ascribed by Conde to the royal poets of Cordova. The compositions of the golden age of the Abassides, and of the preceding period, do not seem to have been infected with the taint of exaggeration, so offensive to a European, which distinguishes the later productions in the decay of the empire.

Whatever be thought of the influence of the Arabic on European literature in general, there can be no reasonable doubt that it has been considerable on the Provencal and the Castilian. In the latter especially, so far from being confined to the vocabulary, or to external forms of composition, it seems to have penetrated deep into its spirit, and is plainly discernible in that affectation of stateliness and Oriental hyberbole, which characterizes Spanish writers even at the present day; in the subtilties and conceits with which the ancient Castilian verse is so liberally bespangled; and in the relish for proverbs and prudential maxims, which is so general that it may be considered national. [49]

A decided effect has been produced on the romantic literature of Europe by those tales of fairy enchantment, so characteristic of Oriental genius, and in which it seems to have revelled with uncontrolled delight. These tales, which furnished the principal diversion of the East, were imported by the Saracens into Spain; and we find the monarchs of Cordova solacing their leisure hours with listening to their rawis, or novelists, who sang to them.

"Of ladye-love and war, romance, and knightly worth." [50]

The same spirit, penetrating into France, stimulated the more sluggish inventions of the trouvere, and, at a later and more polished period, called forth the imperishable creations of the Italian muse. [51]

It is unfortunate for the Arabians, that their literature should be locked up in a character and idiom so difficult of access to European scholars. Their wild, imaginative poetry, scarcely capable of transfusion into a foreign tongue, is made known to us only through the medium of bald prose translation, while their scientific treatises have been done into Latin with an inaccuracy, which, to make use of a pun of Casiri's, merits the name of perversions rather than versions of the originals. [52] How obviously inadequate, then, are our means of forming any just estimate of their literary merits! It is unfortunate for them, moreover, that the Turks, the only nation, which, from an identity of religion and government with the Arabs, as well as from its political consequence, would seem to represent them on the theatre of modern Europe, should be a race so degraded; one which, during the five centuries that it has been in possession of the finest climate and monuments of antiquity, has so seldom been quickened into a display of genius, or added so little of positive value to the literary treasures descended from its ancient masters. Yet this people, so sensual and sluggish, we are apt to confound in imagination with the sprightly, intellectual Arab. Both indeed have been subjected to the influence of the same degrading political and religious institutions, which on the Turks have produced the results naturally to have been expected; while the Arabians, on the other hand, exhibit the extraordinary phenomenon of a nation, under all these embarrassments, rising to a high degree of elegance and intellectual culture.

The empire, which once embraced more than half of the ancient world, has now shrunk within its original limits; and the Bedouin wanders over his native desert as free, and almost as uncivilized, as before the coming of his apostle. The language, which was once spoken along the southern shores of the Mediterranean and the whole extent of the Indian Ocean, is broken up into a variety of discordant dialects. Darkness has again settled over those regions of Africa, which were illumined by the light of learning. The elegant dialect of the Koran is studied as a dead language, even in the birth-place of the prophet. Not a printing-press at this day is to be found throughout the whole Arabian Peninsula. Even in Spain, in Christian Spain, alas! the contrast is scarcely less degrading. A death-like torpor has succeeded to her former intellectual activity. Her cities are emptied of the population with which they teemed in the days of the Saracens. Her climate is as fair, but her fields no longer bloom with the same rich and variegated husbandry. Her most interesting monuments are those constructed by the Arabs; and the traveller, as he wanders amid their desolate, but beautiful ruins, ponders on the destinies of a people, whose very existence seems now to have been almost as fanciful as the magical creations in one of their own fairy tales.

* * * *

Notwithstanding the history of the Arabs is so intimately connected with that of the Spaniards, that it may be justly said to form the reverse side of it, and notwithstanding the amplitude of authentic documents in the Arabic tongue to be found in the public libraries, the Castilian writers, even the most eminent, until the latter half of the last century, with an insensibility which can be imputed to nothing else but a spirit of religious bigotry, have been content to derive their narratives exclusively from national authorities. A fire, which, occurred in the Escurial in 1671, having consumed more than three-quarters of the magnificent collection of eastern manuscripts which it contained, the Spanish government, taking some shame to itself, as it would appear, for its past supineness, caused a copious catalogue of the surviving volumes, to the number of 1850, to be compiled by the learned Casiri; and the result was his celebrated work, "Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana Escurialensis," which appeared in the years 1760-70, and which would reflect credit from the splendor of its typographical execution on any press of the present day. This work, although censured by some later Orientalists as hasty and superficial, must ever be highly valued as affording the only complete index to the rich repertory of Arabian manuscripts in the Escurial, and for the ample evidence which it exhibits of the science and mental culture of the Spanish Arabs. Several other native scholars, among whom Andres and Masdeu may be particularly noticed, have made extensive researches into the literary history of this people. Still, their political history, so essential to a correct knowledge of the Spanish, was comparatively neglected, until Senor Conde, the late learned librarian of the Academy, who had given ample evidence of his Oriental learning in his version and illustrations of the Nubian Geographer, and a Dissertation on Arabic Coins published in the fifth volume of the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of History, compiled his work entitled "Historia de la Dominacion de los Arabes en Espana." The first volume appeared in 1820. Bat unhappily the death of its author, occurring in the autumn of the same year, prevented the completion of his design. The two remaining volumes, however, were printed in the course of that and the following year from his own manuscripts; and although their comparative meagreness and confused chronology betray the want of the same paternal hand, they contain much interesting information. The relation of the conquest of Granada, especially, with which the work concludes, exhibits some important particulars in a totally different point of view from that in which they had been presented by the principal Spanish historians.

The first volume, which may be considered as having received the last touches of its author, embraces a circumstantial narrative of the great Saracen invasion, of the subsequent condition of Spain under the viceroys, and of the empire of the Omeyades; undoubtedly the most splendid portion of Arabian annals, but the one, unluckily, which has been most copiously illustrated in the popular work compiled by Cardonne from the Oriental manuscripts in the Royal Library at Paris. But as this author has followed the Spanish and the Oriental authorities, indiscriminately, no part of his book can be cited as a genuine Arabic version, except indeed the last sixty pages, comprising the conquest of Granada, which Cardonne professes in his Preface to have drawn exclusively from an Arabian manuscript. Conde, on the other hand, professes to have adhered to his originals with such scrupulous fidelity, that "the European reader may feel that he is perusing an Arabian author;" and certainly very strong internal evidence is afforded of the truth of this assertion, in the peculiar national and religious spirit which pervades the work, and in a certain florid gasconade of style, common with the Oriental writers. It is this fidelity that constitutes the peculiar value of Conde's narrative. It is the first time that the Arabians, at least those of Spain, the part of the nation which reached the highest degree of refinement, have been allowed to speak for themselves. The history, or rather tissue of histories, embodied in the translation, is certainly conceived in no very philosophical spirit, and contains, as might be expected from an Asiatic pen, little for the edification of a European reader on subjects of policy and government. The narrative is, moreover, encumbered with frivolous details and a barren muster-roll of names and titles, which would better become a genealogical table than a history. But, with every deduction, it must be allowed to exhibit a sufficiently clear view of the intricate conflicting relations of the petty principalities, which swarmed over the Peninsula; and to furnish abundant evidence of a wide-spread intellectual improvement amid all the horrors of anarchy and a ferocious despotism. The work has already been translated, or rather paraphrased, into French. The necessity of an English version will doubtless be in a great degree superseded by the History of the Spanish Arabs, preparing for the Cabinet Cyclopaedia, by Mr. Southey,—a writer, with whom few Castilian scholars will be willing to compete, even on their own ground; and who is, happily, not exposed to the national or religious prejudices, which can interfere with his rendering perfect justice to his subject.

FOOTNOTES

[1] See Introduction, Section I. Note 2, of this History.

[2] The Koran, in addition to the repeated assurances of Paradise to the martyr who falls in battle, contains the regulations of a precise military code. Military service in some shape or other is exacted from all. The terms to be prescribed to the enemy and the vanquished, the division of the spoil, the seasons of lawful truce, the conditions on which the comparatively small number of exempts are permitted to remain at home, are accurately defined. (Sale's Koran, chap. 2, 8, 9, et alibi.) When the algihed, or Mahometan crusade, which, in its general design and immunities, bore a close resemblance to the Christian, was preached in the mosque, every true believer was bound to repair to the standard of his chief. "The holy war," says one of the early Saracen generals, "is the ladder of Paradise. The Apostle of God styled himself the son of the sword. He loved to repose in the shadow of banners and on the field of battle."

[3] The successors, caliphs or vicars, as they were styled, of Mahomet, represented both his spiritual and temporal authority. Their office involved almost equally ecclesiastical and military functions. It was their duty to lead the army in battle, and on the pilgrimage to Mecca. They were to preach a sermon, and offer up public prayers in the mosques every Friday. Many of their prerogatives resemble those assumed anciently by the popes. They conferred investitures on the Moslem princes by the symbol of a ring, a sword, or a standard. They complimented them with the titles of "defender of the faith," "column of religion," and the like. The proudest potentate held the bridle of their mules, and paid his homage by touching their threshold with his forehead. The authority of the caliphs was in this manner founded on opinion no less than on power; and their ordinances, however frivolous or iniquitous in themselves, being enforced, as it were, by a divine sanction, became laws which it was sacrilege to disobey. See D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, (La Haye, 1777-9,) voce Khalifah.

[4] The character of the Arabs before the introduction of Islam, like that of most rude nations, is to be gathered from their national songs and romances. The poems suspended at Mecca, familiar to us in the elegant version of Sir William Jones, and still more, the recent translation of "Antar," a composition indeed of the age of Al Raschid, but wholly devoted to the primitive Bedouins, present us with a lively picture of their peculiar habits, which, notwithstanding the influence of a temporary civilization, may be thought to bear great resemblance to those of their descendants at the present day.

[5] Startling as it may be, there is scarcely a vestige of any of the particulars, circumstantially narrated by the national historians (Mariana, Zurita, Abarca, Moret, etc.) as the immediate causes of the subversion of Spain, to be found in the chronicles of the period. No intimation of the persecution, or of the treason, of the two sons of Witiza is to be met with in any Spanish writer, as far as I know, until nearly two centuries after the conquest; none earlier than this, of the defection of Archbishop Oppas, during the fatal conflict near Xerez; and none of the tragical amours of Roderic and the revenge of count Julian, before the writers of the thirteenth century. Nothing indeed can be more jejune than the original narratives of the invasion. The continuation of the Chronicon del Biclarense, and the Chronicon de Isidoro Pacense or de Beja, which are contained in the voluminous collection of Florez, (Espana Sagrada, tom. vi. and viii.) afford the only histories contemporary with the event. Conde is mistaken in his assertion (Dominacion de los Arabes, Prol. p. vii.), that the work of Isidoro de Beja was the only narrative written during that period. Spain had not the pen of a Bede or an Eginhart to describe the memorable catastrophe. But the few and meagre touches of the contemporary chroniclers have left ample scope for conjectural history, which has been most industriously improved.

The reports, according to Conde, (Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. p. 36,) greedily circulated among the Saracens, of the magnificence and general prosperity of the Gothic monarchy, may sufficiently account for its invasion by an enemy flushed with uninterrupted conquests, and whose fanatical ambition was well illustrated by one of their own generals, who, on reaching the western extremity of Africa, plunged his horse into the Atlantic, and sighed for other shores on which to plant the banners of Islam. See Cardonne, Histoire de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne sous la Domination des Arabes, (Paris, 1765,) tom. i. p. 37.

[6] The laborious diligence of Masdeu may be thought to have settled the epoch, about which so much learned dust has been raised. The fourteenth volume of his Historia Critica de Espana y de la Cultura Espanola (Madrid, 1783-1805) contains an accurate table, by which the minutest dates of the Mahometan lunar year are adjusted by those of the Christian era. The fall of Roderic on the field of battle is attested by both the domestic chroniclers of that period, as well as by the Saracens. (Incerti Auctoris Additio ad Joannem Biclarensem, apud Florez, Espana Sagrada, tom. vi. p. 430.—Isidori Pacensis Episcopi Chronicon, apud Florez, Espana Sagrada, tom. viii. p. 290.) The tales of the ivory and marble chariot, of the gallant steed Orelia and magnificent vestments of Roderic, discovered after the fight on the banks of the Guadalete, of his probable escape and subsequent seclusion among the mountains of Portugal, which have been thought worthy of Spanish history, have found a much more appropriate place in their romantic national ballads, as well as in the more elaborate productions of Scott and Southey.

[7] "Whatever curses," says an eye-witness, whose meagre diction is quickened on this occasion into something like sublimity, "whatever curses were denounced by the prophets of old against Jerusalem, whatever fell upon ancient Babylon, whatever miseries Rome inflicted upon the glorious company of the martyrs, all these were visited upon the once happy and prosperous, but now desolated Spain." Pacensis Chronicon, apud Florez, Espana Sagrada, tom. viii. p. 292.

[8] The frequency of this alliance may be inferred from an extraordinary, though, doubtless, extravagant statement cited by Zurita. The ambassadors of James II., of Aragon, in 1311, represented to the sovereign pontiff, Clement V., that, of the 200,000 souls, which then composed the population of Granada, there were not more than 500 of pure Moorish descent. Anales, tom. iv. fol. 314.

[9] The famous persecutions of Cordova under the reigns of Abderrahman II. and his son, which, to judge from the tone of Castilian writers, might vie with those of Nero and Diocletian, are admitted by Morales (Obras, tom. x. p. 74) to have occasioned the destruction of only forty individuals. Most of these unhappy fanatics solicited the crown of martyrdom by an open violation of the Mahometan laws and usages. The details are given by Florez, in the tenth volume of his collection.

[10] Bleda, Coronica de los Moros de Espana, (Valencia, 1618,) lib. 2, cap. 16, 17.—Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. i. pp. 83 et seq. 179.—Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, Prol., p. vii. and tom. i. pp. 29-54, 75, 87.—Morales, Obras, tom. vi. pp. 407-417; tom. vii. pp. 262- 264.—Florez, Espana Sagrada, tom. x. pp. 237-270.—Fuero Juzgo, Int. p. 40.

[11] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, part. 2, cap. 1-46.

[12] Ibid., ubi supra.—Masdeu, Historia Critica, tom. xiii. pp. 178, 187.

[13] The same taste is noticed at the present day, by a traveller, whose pictures glow with the warm colors of the east. "Aussi des que vous approchez, en Europe ou en Asie, d'une terre possedee par les Musulmans, vous la reconnaissez de loin au riche et sombre voile de verdure qui flotte gracieusement sur elle:—des arbres pour s'asseoir a leur ombre, des fontaines jaillissantes pour rever a leur bruit, du silence et des mosquees aux legers minarets, s'elevant a chaque pas du sein d'une terre pieuse." Lamartine, Voyage en Orient, tome i. p. 172.

[14] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. pp. 199, 265, 284, 285, 417, 446, 447, et alibi.—Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. i. pp. 227-230 et seq.

[15] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. pp. 211, 212, 226.— Swinburne, Travels through Spain, (London, 1787,) let. 35.—Xerif Aledris, conocido por El Nubiense, Descripcion de Espana, con Traduccion y Notas de Conde, (Madrid, 1799,) pp. 161, 162.—Morales, Obras, tom. x. p. 61.— Chenier, Recherches Historiques sur les Maures, et Histoire de l'Empire de Maroc, (Paris, 1787,) tom. ii. p. 312.—Laborde, Itineraire, tome iii. p. 226.

[16] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. pp 214, 228, 270, 611.— Masdeu, Historia Critica, tom. xiii. p. 118.—Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. i. pp. 338-343.—Casiri quotes from an Arabic historian the conditions on which Abderrahman I. proffered his alliance to the Christian princes of Spain, viz. the annual tribute of 10,000 ounces of gold, 10,000 pounds of silver, 10,000 horses, etc., etc. The absurdity of this story, inconsiderately repeated by historians, if any argument were necessary to prove it, becomes sufficiently manifest from the fact, that the instrument is dated in the 142d year of the Hegira, being a little more than fifty years after the conquest. See Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana Escurialensis, (Matriti, 1760,) tom. ii. p. 104.

[17] Hist. Naturalis, lib. 33, cap. 4.

[18] Introduction a l'Histoire Naturelle de l'Espagne, traduite par Flavigny, (Paris, 1776,) p. 411.

[19] See a sensible essay by the Abbe Correa da Serra on the husbandry of the Spanish Arabs, contained in tom. i. of Archives Litteraires de l'Europe, (Paris, 1804.)—Masdeu, Historia Critica, tom. xiii. pp. 115, 117, 127, 131.—Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. cap. 44.—Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. i. p. 338.

An absurd story has been transcribed from Cardonne, with little hesitation, by almost every succeeding writer upon this subject. According to him, (Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. i. p. 338,) "the banks of the Guadalquivir were lined with no less than twelve thousand villages and hamlets." The length of the river, not exceeding three hundred miles, would scarcely afford room for the same number of farm-houses. Conde's version of the Arabic passage represents twelve thousand hamlets, farms, and castles, to have "been scattered over the regions watered by the Gaudalquivir;" indicating by this indefinite statement nothing more than the extreme populousness of the province of Andalusia.

[20] Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. pp. 38, 202.—Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, part. 2, cap. 88.

[21] Storia della Letteratura Italiana, (Roma, 1782-97,) tom. iii. p. 231.—Turner, History of the Anglo-Saxons, (London, 1820,) vol. iii. p. 137.—Andres, Dell' Origine, de' Progressi e dello Stato Attuale d'Ogni Letteratura, (Venezia, 1783,) part. 1, cap. 8, 9.—Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 149.—Masdeu, Historia Critica, tom. xiii. pp. 165, 171.—Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, part. 2, cap. 93.—Among the accomplished women of this period, Valadata, the daughter of the caliph Mahomet, is celebrated as having frequently carried away the palm of eloquence in her discussions with the most learned academicians. Others again, with an intrepidity that might shame the degeneracy of a modern blue, plunged boldly into the studies of philosophy, history, and jurisprudence.

[22] Garibay, Compendio, lib. 39, cap. 3.

[23] Zurita, Anales, lib. 20, cap. 42.

[24] L. Marineo, Cosas Memorables, fol. 169.

[25] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. ii. p. 147.—Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. pp. 248 et seq.—Pedraza, Antiguedad y Excelencias de Granada, (Madrid, 1608,) lib. 1.—Pedraza has collected the various etymologies of the term Granada, which some writers have traced to the fact of the city having been the spot where the pomegranate was first introduced from Africa; others to the large quantity of grain in which its vega abounded; others again to the resemblance which the city, divided into two hills thickly sprinkled with houses, bore to a half-opened pomegranate. (Lib. 2, cap. 17.) The arms of the city, which were in part composed of a pomegranate, would seem to favor the derivation of its name from that of the fruit.

[26] Pedraza, Antiguedad de Granada, fol. 101.—Denina, Delle Rivoluzioni d'Italia, (Venezia, 1816,) Capmany y Montpalau, Memorias Historicas sobre la Marina, Comercio, y Artes de Barcelona, (Madrid, 1779-92,) tom. iii. p. 218; tom. iv. pp. 67 et seq.—Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. cap. 26.—The ambassador of the emperor Frederic III., on his passage to the court of Lisbon in the middle of the fifteenth century, contrasts the superior cultivation, as well as general civilization, of Granada at this period with that of the other countries of Europe through which he had travelled. Sismondi, Histoire des Republiques Italiennes du Moyen-Age, (Paris, 1818,) tom. ix. p. 405.

[27] Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. pp. 250-258.—The fifth volume of the royal Spanish Academy of History contains an erudite essay by Conde on Arabic money, principally with reference to that coined in Spain, pp. 225-315.

[28] A specification of a royal donative in that day may serve to show the martial spirit of the age. In one of these, made by the king of Granada to the Castilian sovereign, we find twenty noble steeds of the royal stud, reared on the banks of the Xenil, with superb caparisons, and the same number of scimitars richly garnished with gold and jewels; and, in another, mixed up with perfumes and cloth of gold, we meet with a litter of tame lions. (Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. pp. 163, 183.) This latter symbol of royalty appears to have been deemed peculiarly appropriate to the kings of Leon. Ferreras informs us that the ambassadors from France at the Castilian court, in 1434, were received by John II. with a full-grown domesticated lion crouching at his feet. (Hist. d'Espagne, tom. vi. p. 401.) The same taste appears still to exist in Turkey. Dr. Clarke, in his visit to Constantinople, met with one of these terrific pets, who used to follow his master, Hassan Pacha, about like a dog.

[29] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. cap. 28.—Henriquez del Castillo (Cronica, cap. 138,) gives an account of an intended duel between two Castilian nobles, in the presence of the king of Granada, as late as 1470. One of the parties, Don Alfonso de Aguilar, failing to keep his engagement, the other rode round the lists in triumph, with his adversary's portrait contemptuously fastened to the tail of his horse.

[30] It must be admitted, that these ballads, as far as facts are concerned, are too inexact to furnish other than a very slippery foundation for history. The most beautiful portion perhaps of the Moorish ballads, for example, is taken up with the feuds of the Abencerrages in the latter days of Granada. Yet this family, whose romantic story is still repeated to the traveller amid the ruins of the Alhambra, is scarcely noticed, as far as I am aware, by contemporary writers, foreign or domestic, and would seem to owe its chief celebrity to the apocryphal version of Cines Perez de Hyta, whose "Milesian tales," according to the severe sentence of Nic. Antonio, "are fit only to amuse the lazy and the listless." (Bibliotheca Nova, tom. i. p. 536.)

But, although the Spanish ballads are not entitled to the credit of strict historical documents, they may yet perhaps be received in evidence of the prevailing character of the social relations of the age; a remark indeed predicable of most works of fiction, written by authors contemporary with the events they describe, and more especially so of that popular minstrelsy, which, emanating from a simple, uncorrupted class, is less likely to swerve from truth, than more ostentatious works of art. The long cohabitation of the Saracens with the Christians, (full evidence of which is afforded by Capmany, (Mem. de Barcelona, tom. iv. Apend. no. 11,) who quotes a document from the public archives of Catalonia, showing the great number of Saracens residing in Aragon even in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the most flourishing period of the Granadian empire,) had enabled many of them confessedly to speak and write the Spanish language with purity and elegance. Some of the graceful little songs, which are still chanted by the peasantry of Spain in their dances, to the accompaniment of the castanet, are referred by a competent critic (Conde, De la Poesia Oriental, MS.) to an Arabian origin. There can be little hazard, therefore, in imputing much of this peculiar minstrelsy to the Arabians themselves, the contemporaries, and perhaps the eye- witnesses, of the events they celebrate.

[31] Casiri (Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 259) has transcribed a passage from an Arabian author of the fourteenth century, inveighing bitterly against the luxury of the Moorish ladies, their gorgeous apparel and habits of expense, "amounting almost to insanity," in a tone which may remind one of the similar philippic by his contemporary Dante, against his fair countrywomen of Florence.—Two ordinances of a king of Granada, cited by Conde in his History, prescribed the separation of the women from the men in the mosques; and prohibit their attendance on certain festivals, without the protection of their husbands or some near relative.—Their femmes savantes, as we have seen, were in the habit of conferring freely with men of letters, and of assisting in person at the academical seances.—And lastly, the frescoes alluded to in the text represent the presence of females at the tournaments, and the fortunate knight receiving the palm of victory from their hands.

[32] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. p. 340; tom. iii. p. 119.

[33] Casiri, on Arabian authority, computes it at 200,000 men. Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. i. p. 338.

[34] Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, p. 250.

[35] Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. p. 169.—These ruined fortifications still thickly stud the border territories of Granada; and many an Andalusian mill, along the banks of the Guadayra and Guadalquivir, retains its battlemented tower, which served for the defence of its inmates against the forays of the enemy.

[36] D'Herbelot, (Bib. Orientale, tom. i. p. 630,) among other authentic traditions of Mahomet, quotes one as indicating his encouragement of letters, viz. "That the ink of the doctors and the blood of the martyrs are of equal price." M. OElsner (Des Effets de la Religion de Mohammed, Paris, 1810) has cited several others of the same liberal import. But such traditions cannot be received in evidence of the original doctrine of the prophet. They are rejected as apocryphal by the Persians and the whole sect of the Shiites, and are entitled to little weight with a European.

[37] When the caliph Al Mamon encouraged, by his example as well as patronage, a more enlightened policy, he was accused by the more orthodox Mussulmans of attempting to subvert the principles of their religion. See Pococke, Spec. Hist. Arabum, (Oxon. 1650,) p. 166.

[38] Andres, Letteratura, part. 1, cap. 8, 10.—Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. pp. 71, 251, et passim.

[39] Casiri mentions one of these universal geniuses, who published no less than a thousand and fifty treatises on the various topics of Ethics, History, Law, Medicine, etc.! Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 107. —See also tom. i. p. 370; tom. ii. p. 71 et alibi.—Zuniga, Annales de Sevilla, p. 22.—D'Herbelot, Bib. Orientale, voce Tarikh.—Masdeu, Historia Critica, tom. xiii. pp. 203, 205.—Andres, Letteratura, part. 1, cap. 8.

[40] Consult the sensible, though perhaps severe, remarks of Degerando on Arabian science. (Hist. de la Philosophie, tom. iv. cap. 24.)—The reader may also peruse with advantage a disquisition on Arabian metaphysics in Turner's History of England, (vol. iv. pp. 405-449.—Brucker, Hist. Philosophiae, tom. in. p. 105.)—Ludovicus Vives seems to have been the author of the imputation in the text. (Nic. Antonio, Bibliotheca Vetus, tom. ii. p. 394.) Averroes translated some of the philosophical works of Aristotle from the Greek into Arabic; a Latin version of which translation was afterwards made. Though D'Herbelot is mistaken (Bib. Orientale, art. Roschd) in saying that Averroes was the first who translated Aristotle into Arabic; as this had been done two centuries before, at least, by Honain and others in the ninth century, (see Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. i. p. 304,) and Bayle has shown that a Latin version of the Stagirite was used by the Europeans before the alleged period. See art. Averroes.

[41] Sprengel, Histoire de la Medecine, traduite par Jourdan, (Paris, 1815,) tom. ii. pp. 263 et seq.

[42] Degerando, Hist. de la Philosophie, tom. iv. ubi supra.

[43] Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 9.—Andres, Letteratura, part. 1, cap. 10.

[44] Letteratura Italiana, tom. v. p. 87.

[45] The battle of Crecy furnishes the earliest instance on record of the use of artillery by the European Christians; although Du Cange, among several examples which he enumerates, has traced a distinct notice of its existence as far back as 1338. (Glossarium ad Scriptores Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, (Paris, 1739,) and Supplement, (Paris, 1766,) voce Bombarda.) The history of the Spanish Arabs carries it to a much earlier period. It was employed by the Moorish king of Granada at the siege of Baza, in 1312 and 1325. (Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. cap. 18.—Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 7.) It is distinctly noticed in an Arabian treatise as ancient as 1249; and, finally, Casiri quotes a passage from a Spanish author at the close of the eleventh Century, (whose MS., according to Nic. Antonio, though familiar to scholars, lies still entombed in the dust of libraries,) which describes the use of artillery in a naval engagement of that period between the Moors of Tunis and of Seville. Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 8.—Nic, Antonio, Bibliotheca Vetus, tom. ii. p. 12.

[46] Petrarch complains, in one of his letters from the country, that "jurisconsults and divines, nay his own valet, had taken to rhyming; and he was afraid the very cattle might begin to low in verse;" apud De Sade, Memoires pour la Vie de Petrarque, tom. iii. p. 243.

[47] Andres, Letteratura, part. 1, cap. 11.—Yet this popular assertion is contradicted by Reinesius, who states, that both Homer and Pindar were translated into Arabic by the middle of the eighth century. See Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, (Hamb. 1712-38,) tom. xii. p. 753.

[48] Sir William Jones, Traite sur la Poesie Orientale, sec. 2.—Sismondi says that Sir W. Jones is mistaken in citing the history of Timour by Ebn. Arabschah, as an Arabic epic. (Litterature du Midi, tom. i. p. 57.) It is Sismondi who is mistaken, since the English critic states that the Arabs have no heroic poem, and that this poetical prose history is not accounted such even by the Arabs themselves.

[49] It would require much more learning than I am fortified with, to enter into the merits of the question, which has been raised respecting the probable influence of the Arabian on the literature of Europe. A. V. Schlegel, in a work of little bulk, but much value, in refuting with his usual vivacity the extravagant theory of Andres, has been led to conclusions of an opposite nature, which may be thought perhaps scarcely less extravagant. (Observations sur la Langue et la Litterature Provencales, p. 64.) It must indeed seem highly improbable that the Saracens, who, during the Middle Ages, were so far superior in science and literary culture to the Europeans, could have resided so long in immediate contact with them, and in those very countries indeed which gave birth to the most cultivated poetry of that period, without exerting some perceptible influence upon it. Be this as it may, its influence on the Castilian cannot reasonably be disputed. This has been briefly traced by Conde in an "Essay on Oriental Poetry," Poesia Oriental, whose publication he anticipates in the Preface to his "History of the Spanish Arabs," but which still remains in manuscript. (The copy I have used is in the library of Mr. George Ticknor.) He professes in this work to discern in the earlier Castilian poetry, in the Cid, the Alexander, in Berceo's, the arch-priest of Hita's, and others of similar antiquity, most of the peculiarities and varieties of Arabian verse; the same cadences and number of syllables, the same intermixture of assonances and consonances, the double hemistich and prolonged repetition of the final rhyme. From the same source he derives much of the earlier rural minstrelsy of Spain, as well as the measures of its romances and seguidillas; and in the Preface to his History, he has ventured on the bold assertion, that the Castilian owes so much of its vocabulary to the Arabic, that it may be almost accounted a dialect of the latter. Conde's criticisms, however, must be quoted with reserve. His habitual studies had given him such a keen relish for Oriental literature, that he was, in a manner, denaturalized from his own.

[50] Byron's beautiful line may seem almost a version of Conde's Spanish text, "sucesos de armas y de amores con muy estranos lances y en elegante estilo."—Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. p. 457.

[51] Sismondi, in his Litterature du Midi, (tom. i. pp. 267 et seq.), and more fully in his Republiques Italiennes, (tom. xvi. pp. 448 et seq.), derives the jealousy of the sex, the ideas of honor, and the deadly spirit of revenge, which distinguished the southern nations of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, from the Arabians. Whatever be thought of the jealousy of the sex, it might have been supposed that the principles of honor and the spirit of revenge might, without seeking further, find abundant precedent in the feudal habits and institutions of our European ancestors.

[52] "Quas perversivnes potius, quam versiones merito dixeris." Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. i. p. 266.



CHAPTER IX.

WAR OF GRANADA.—SURPRISE OF ZAHARA.—CAPTURE OF ALHAMA.

1481-1482.

Zahara Surprised by the Moors.—Marquis of Cadiz.—His Expedition against Alhama.—Valor of the Citizens.—Desperate Struggle.—Fall of Alhama.— Consternation of the Moors.—Vigorous Measures of the Queen.

No sooner had Ferdinand and Isabella restored internal tranquillity to their dominions, and made the strength effective which had been acquired by their union under one government, than they turned their eyes to those fair regions of the Peninsula, over which the Moslem crescent had reigned triumphant for nearly eight centuries. Fortunately, an act of aggression on the part of the Moors furnished a pretext for entering on their plan of conquest, at the moment when it was ripe for execution. Aben Ismael, who had ruled in Granada during the latter part of John the Second's reign, and the commencement of Henry the Fourth's, had been partly indebted for his throne to the former monarch; and sentiments of gratitude, combined with a naturally amiable disposition, had led him to foster as amicable relations with the Christian princes, as the jealousy of two nations, that might be considered the natural enemies of each other, would permit; so that, notwithstanding an occasional border foray, or the capture of a frontier fortress, such a correspondence was maintained between the two kingdoms, that the nobles of Castile frequently resorted to the court of Granada, where, forgetting their ancient feuds, they mingled with the Moorish cavaliers in the generous pastimes of chivalry.

Muley Abul Hacen, who succeeded his father in 1466, was of a very different temperament. His fiery character prompted him, when very young, to violate the truce by an unprovoked inroad into Andalusia; and, although after his accession domestic troubles occupied him too closely to allow leisure for foreign war, he still cherished in secret the same feelings of animosity against the Christians. When, in 1476, the Spanish sovereigns required as the condition of a renewal of the truce, which he solicited, the payment of the annual tribute imposed on his predecessors, he proudly replied that "the mints of Granada coined no longer gold, but steel." His subsequent conduct did not belie the spirit of this Spartan answer. [1]

At length, towards the close of the year 1481, the storm which had been so long gathering burst upon Zahara, a small fortified town on the frontier of Andalusia, crowning a lofty eminence, washed at its base by the river Guadalete, which from its position seemed almost inaccessible. The garrison, trusting to these natural defences, suffered itself to be surprised on the night of the 20th of December, by the Moorish monarch; who, scaling the walls under favor of a furious tempest, which prevented his approach from being readily heard, put to the sword such of the guard as offered resistance, and swept away the whole population of the place, men, women, and children, in slavery to Granada.

The intelligence of this disaster caused deep mortification to the Spanish sovereigns, especially to Ferdinand, by whose grandfather Zahara had been recovered from the Moors. Measures were accordingly taken for strengthening the whole line of frontier, and the utmost vigilance was exerted to detect some vulnerable point of the enemy, on which retaliation might be successfully inflicted. Neither were the tidings of their own successes welcomed, with the joy that might have been expected, by the people of Granada. The prognostics, it was said, afforded by the appearance of the heavens, boded no good. More sure prognostics were afforded in the judgments of thinking men, who deprecated the temerity of awakening the wrath of a vindictive and powerful enemy, "Woe is me!" exclaimed an ancient Alfaki, on quitting the hall of audience, "the ruins of Zahara will fall on our own heads; the days of the Moslem empire in Spain are now numbered!" [2]

It was not long before the desired opportunity for retaliation presented itself to the Spaniards. One Juan de Ortega, a captain of escaladores, or sealers, so denominated from the peculiar service in which they were employed in besieging cities, who had acquired some reputation under John the Second, in the wars of Roussillon, reported to Diego de Merlo, assistant of Seville, that the fortress of Albania, situated in the heart of the Moorish territories, was so negligently guarded, that it might be easily carried by an enemy, who had skill enough to approach it. The fortress, as well as the city of the same name, which it commanded, was built, like many others in that turbulent period, along the crest of a rocky eminence, encompassed by a river at its base, and, from its natural advantages, might be deemed impregnable. This strength of position, by rendering all other precautions apparently superfluous, lulled its defenders into a security like that which had proved so fatal to Zahara. Alhama, as this Arabic name implies, was famous for its baths, whose annual rents are said to have amounted to five hundred thousand ducats. The monarchs of Granada, indulging the taste common to the people of the east, used to frequent this place, with their court, to refresh themselves with its delicious waters, so that Alhama became embellished with all the magnificence of a royal residence. The place was still further enriched by its being the depot of the public taxes on land, which constituted a principal branch of the revenue, and by its various manufactures of cloth, for which its inhabitants were celebrated throughout the kingdom of Granada. [3]

Diego de Merlo, although struck with the advantages of this conquest, was not insensible to the difficulties with which it would be attended; since Alhama was sheltered under the very wings of Granada, from which it lay scarcely eight leagues distant, and could be reached only by traversing the most populous portion of the Moorish territory, or by surmounting a precipitous sierra, or chain of mountains, which screened it on the north. Without delay, however, he communicated the information which he had received to Don Rodrigo Ponce de Leon, marquis of Cadiz, as the person best fitted by his capacity and courage for such an enterprise. This nobleman, who had succeeded his father, the count of Arcos, in 1469, as head of the great house of Ponce de Leon, was at this period about thirty- nine years of age. Although a younger and illegitimate son, he had been preferred to the succession in consequence of the extraordinary promise which his early youth exhibited. When scarcely seventeen years old, he achieved a victory over the Moors, accompanied with a signal display of personal prowess. [4] Later in life, he formed a connection with the daughter of the marquis of Villena, the factious minister of Henry the Fourth, through whose influence he was raised to the dignity of marquis of Cadiz. This alliance attached him to the fortunes of Henry, in his disputes with his brother Alfonso, and subsequently with Isabella, on whose accession, of course, Don Rodrigo looked with no friendly eye. He did not, however, engage in any overt act of resistance, but occupied himself with prosecuting an hereditary feud which he had revived with the duke of Medina Sidonia, the head of the Guzmans; a family, which from ancient times had divided with his own the great interests of Andalusia. The pertinacity with which this feud was conducted, and the desolation which it carried not only into Seville, but into every quarter of the province, have been noticed in the preceding pages. The vigorous administration of Isabella repressed these disorders, and after abridging the overgrown power of the two nobles, effected an apparent (it was only apparent) reconciliation between them. The fiery spirit of the marquis of Cadiz, no longer allowed to escape in domestic broil, urged him to seek distinction in more honorable warfare; and at this moment he lay in his castle at Arcos, looking with a watchful eye over the borders, and waiting, like a lion in ambush, the moment when he could spring upon his victim.

Without hesitation, therefore, he assumed the enterprise proposed by Diego de Merlo, imparting his purpose to Don Pedro Henriquez, adelantado of Andalusia, a relative of Ferdinand, and to the alcaydes of two or three neighboring fortresses. With the assistance of these friends he assembled a force which, including those who marched under the banner of Seville, amounted to two thousand five hundred horse and three thousand foot. His own town of Marchena was appointed as the place of rendezvous. The proposed route lay by the way of Antequera, across the wild sierras of Alzerifa. The mountain passes, sufficiently difficult at a season when their numerous ravines were choked up by the winter torrents, were rendered still more formidable by being traversed in the darkness of night; for the party, in order to conceal their movements, lay by during the day. Leaving their baggage on the banks of the Yeguas, that they might move forward with greater celerity, the whole body at length arrived, after a rapid and most painful inarch, on the third night from their departure, in a deep valley about half a league from Alhama. Here the marquis first revealed the real object of the expedition to his soldiers, who, little dreaming of anything beyond a mere border inroad, were transported with joy at the prospect of the rich booty so nearly within their grasp. [5]

The next morning, being the 28th of February, a small party was detached, about two hours before dawn, under the command of John de Ortega, for the purpose of scaling the citadel, while the main body moved forward more leisurely under the marquis of Cadiz, in order to support them. The night was dark and tempestuous, circumstances which favored their approach in the same manner as with the Moors at Zahara. After ascending the rocky heights which were crowned by the citadel, the ladders were silently placed against the walls, and Ortega, followed by about thirty others, succeeded in gaining the battlements unobserved. A sentinel, who was found sleeping on his post, they at once despatched, and, proceeding cautiously forward to the guard-room, put the whole of the little garrison to the sword, after the short and ineffectual resistance that could be opposed by men suddenly roused from slumber. The city in the mean time was alarmed, but it was too late; the citadel was taken; and the outer gates, which opened into the country, being thrown open, the marquis of Cadiz entered with trumpet sounding and banner flying, at the head of his army, and took possession of the fortress. [6]

After allowing the refreshment necessary to the exhausted spirits of his soldiers, the marquis resolved to sally forth at once upon the town, before its inhabitants cpuld muster in sufficient force to oppose him. But the citizens of Alhama, showing a resolution rather to have been expected from men trained in a camp, than from peaceful burghers of a manufacturing town, had sprung to arms at the first alarm, and, gathering in the narrow street on which the portal of the castle opened, so completely commanded it with their arquebuses and crossbows, that the Spaniards, after an ineffectual attempt to force a passage, were compelled to recoil upon their defences, amid showers of bolts and balls which occasioned the loss, among others, of two of their principal alcaydes.

A council of war was then called, in which it was even advised by some, that the fortress, after having been dismantled, should be abandoned as incapable of defence against the citizens on the one hand, and the succors which might be expected speedily to arrive from Granada, on the other. But this counsel was rejected with indignation by the marquis of Cadiz, whose fiery spirit rose with the occasion; indeed, it was not very palatable to most of his followers, whose cupidity was more than ever inflamed by the sight of the rich spoil, which, after so many fatigues, now lay at their feet. It was accordingly resolved to demolish part of the fortifications which looked towards the town, and at all hazards to force a passage into it. This resolution was at once put into execution; and the marquis, throwing himself into the breach thus made, at the head of his men-at- arms, and shouting his war-cry of "St. James and the Virgin," precipitated himself into the thickest of the enemy. Others of the Spaniards, running along the out-works contiguous to the buildings of the city, leaped into the street, and joined their companions there, while others again sallied from the gates, now opened for the second time. [7]

The Moors, unshaken by the fury of this assault, received the assailants with brisk and well-directed volleys of shot and arrows; while the women and children, thronging the roofs and balconies of the houses, discharged on their heads boiling oil, pitch, and missiles of every description. But the weapons of the Moors glanced comparatively harmless from the mailed armor of the Spaniards, while their own bodies, loosely arrayed in such habiliments as they could throw over them in the confusion of the night, presented a fatal mark to their enemies. Still they continued to maintain a stout resistance, checking the progress of the Spaniards by barricades of timber hastily thrown across the streets; and, as their intrenchments were forced one after another, they disputed every inch of ground with the desperation of men who fought for life, fortune, liberty, all that was most dear to them. The contest hardly slackened till the close of day, while the kennels literally ran with blood, and every avenue was choked up with the bodies of the slain. At length, however, Spanish valor proved triumphant in every quarter, except where a small and desperate remnant of the Moors, having gathered their wives and children around them, retreated as a last resort into a large mosque near the walls of the city, from which they kept up a galling fire on the close ranks of the Christians. The latter, after enduring some loss, succeeded in sheltering themselves so effectually under a roof or canopy constructed of their own shields, in the manner practised in war previous to the exclusive use of fire-arms, that they were enabled to approach so near the mosque, as to set fire to its doors; when its tenants, menaced with suffocation, made a desperate sally, in which many perished, and the remainder surrendered at discretion. The prisoners thus made were all massacred on the spot, without distinction, of sex or age, according to the Saracen accounts. But the Castilian writers make no mention of this; and, as the appetites of the Spaniards were not yet stimulated by that love of carnage, which they afterwards displayed in their American wars, and which was repugnant to the chivalrous spirit with which their contests with the Moslems were usually conducted, we may be justified in regarding it as an invention of the enemy. [8]

Alhama was now delivered up to the sack of the soldiery, and rich indeed was the booty which fell into their hands,—gold and silver plate, pearls, jewels, fine silks and cloths, curious and costly furniture, and all the various appurtenances of a thriving, luxurious city. In addition to which, the magazines were found well stored with the more substantial and, at the present juncture, more serviceable supplies of grain, oil, and other provisions. Nearly a quarter of the population is said to have perished in the various conflicts of the day, and the remainder, according to the usage of the time, became the prize of the victors. A considerable number of Christian captives, who were found immured in the public prisons, were restored to freedom, and swelled the general jubilee with their grateful acclamations. The contemporary Castilian chroniclers record also, with no less satisfaction, the detection of a Christian renegade, notorious for his depredations on his countrymen, whose misdeeds the marquis of Cadiz requited by causing him to be hung up over the battlements of the castle, in the face of the whole city. Thus fell the ancient city of Alhama, the first conquest, and achieved with a gallantry and daring unsurpassed by any other during this memorable war. [9]

The report of this disaster fell like the knell of their own doom on the ears of the inhabitants of Granada. It seemed as if the hand of Providence itself must have been stretched forth to smite the stately city, which, reposing as it were under the shadow of their own walls, and in the bosom of a peaceful and populous country, was thus suddenly laid low in blood and ashes. Men now read the fulfilment of the disastrous omens and predictions which ushered in the capture of Zahara. The melancholy romance or ballad, with the burden of Ay de mi Alhama, "Woe is me, Alhama," composed probably by some one of the nation not long after this event, shows how deep was the dejection which settled on the spirits of the people. The old king, Abul Hacen, however, far from resigning himself to useless lamentation, sought to retrieve his loss by the most vigorous measures. A body of a thousand horse was sent forward to reconnoitre the city, while he prepared to follow with as powerful levies, as he could enforce, of the militia of Granada. [10]

The intelligence of the conquest of Alhama diffused general satisfaction throughout Castile, and was especially grateful to the sovereigns, who welcomed it as an auspicious omen of the ultimate success of their designs upon the Moors. They were attending mass in their royal palace of Medina del Campo, when they received despatches from the marquis of Cadiz, informing them of the issue of his enterprise. "During all the while he sat at dinner," says a precise chronicler of the period, "the prudent Ferdinand was revolving in his mind the course best to be adopted." He reflected that the Castilians would soon be beleaguered by an overwhelming force from Granada, and he determined at all hazards to support them. He accordingly gave orders to make instant preparation for departure; but, first, accompanied the queen, attended by a solemn procession of the court and clergy, to the cathedral church of St. James; where Te Deum was chanted, and a humble thanksgiving offered up to the Lord of hosts for the success with which he had crowned their arms. Towards evening, the king set forward on his journey to the south, escorted by such nobles and cavaliers as were in attendance on his person, leaving the queen to follow more leisurely, after having provided reinforcements and supplies requisite for the prosecution of the war. [11]

On the 5th of March, the king of Granada appeared before the walls of Alhama, with an army which amounted to three thousand horse and fifty thousand foot. The first object which encountered his eyes was the mangled remains of his unfortunate subjects, which the Christians, who would have been scandalized by an attempt to give them the rites of sepulture, had from dread of infection thrown over the walls, where they now lay half devoured by birds of prey and the ravenous dogs of the city. The Moslem troops, transported with horror and indignation at this hideous spectacle, called loudly to be led to the attack. They had marched from Granada with so much precipitation, that they were wholly unprovided with artillery, in the use of which they were expert for that period; and which was now the more necessary, as the Spaniards had diligently employed the few days which intervened since their occupation of the place, in repairing the breaches in the fortifications, and in putting them in a posture of defence. But the Moorish ranks were filled with the flower of their chivalry; and their immense superiority of numbers enabled them to make their attacks simultaneously on the most distant quarters of the town, with such unintermitted vivacity, that the little garrison, scarcely allowed a moment for repose, was wellnigh exhausted with fatigue. [12]

At length, however, Abul Hacen, after the loss of more than two thousand of his bravest troops in these precipitate assaults, became convinced of the impracticability of forcing a position, whose natural strength was so ably seconded by the valor of its defenders, and he determined to reduce the place by the more tardy but certain method of blockade. In this he was favored by one or two circumstances. The town, having but a single well within its walls, was almost wholly indebted for its supplies of water to the river which flowed at its base. The Moors, by dint of great labor, succeeded in diverting the stream so effectually, that the only communication with it, which remained open to the besieged, was by a subterraneous gallery or mine, that had probably been contrived with reference to some such emergency by the original inhabitants. The mouth of this passage was commanded in such a manner by the Moorish archers, that no egress could be obtained without a regular skirmish, so that every drop of water might be said to be purchased with the blood of Christians; who, "if they had not possessed the courage of Spaniards," says a Castilian writer, "would have been reduced to the last extremity." In addition to this calamity, the garrison began to be menaced with scarcity of provisions, owing to the improvident waste of the soldiers, who supposed that the city, after being plundered, was to be razed to the ground and abandoned. [13]

At this crisis they received the unwelcome tidings of the failure of an expedition destined for their relief by Alonso de Aguilar. This cavalier, the chief of an illustrious house since rendered immortal by the renown of his younger brother, Gonsalvo de Cordova, had assembled a considerable body of troops, on learning the capture of Alhama, for the purpose of supporting his friend and companion in arms, the marquis of Cadiz. On reaching the shores of the Yeguas, he received, for the first time, advices of the formidable host which lay between him and the city, rendering hopeless any attempt to penetrate into the latter with his inadequate force. Contenting himself, therefore, with recovering the baggage, which the marquis's army in its rapid march, as has been already noticed, had left on the banks of the river, he returned to Antequera. [14]

Under these depressing circumstances, the indomitable spirit of the marquis of Cadiz seemed to infuse itself into the hearts of his soldiers. He was ever in the front of danger, and shared the privations of the meanest of his followers; encouraging them to rely with undoubting confidence on the sympathies which their cause must awaken in the breasts of their countrymen. The event proved that he did not miscalculate. Soon after the occupation of Alhama, the marquis, foreseeing the difficulties of his situation, had despatched missives, requesting the support of the principal lords and cities of Andalusia. In this summons he had omitted the duke of Medina Sidonia, as one who had good reason to take umbrage at being excluded from a share in the original enterprise. Henrique de Guzman, duke of Medina Sidonia, possessed a degree of power more considerable than any other chieftain in the south. His yearly rents amounted to nearly sixty thousand ducats, and he could bring into the field, it was said, from his own resources an army little inferior to what might be raised by a sovereign prince. He had succeeded to his inheritance in 1468, and had very early given his support to the pretensions of Isabella. Notwithstanding his deadly feud with the marquis of Cadiz, he had the generosity, on the breaking out of the present war, to march to the relief of the marchioness when beleaguered, during her husband's absence, by a party of Moors from Ronda, in her own castle of Arcos. He now showed a similar alacrity in sacrificing all personal jealousy at the call of patriotism. [15]

No sooner did he learn the perilous condition of his countrymen in Alhama, than he mustered the whole array of his household troops and retainers, which, when combined with those of the marquis de Villena, of the count de Cabra, and those from Seville, in which city the family of the Guzmans had long exercised a sort of hereditary influence, swelled to the number of five thousand horse and forty thousand foot. The duke of Medina Sidonia, putting himself at the head of this powerful body, set forward without delay on his expedition.

When King Ferdinand in his progress to the south had reached the little town of Adamuz, about five leagues from Cordova, he was informed of the advance of the Andalusian chivalry, and instantly sent instructions to the duke to delay his march, as he intended to come in person and assume the command. But the latter, returning a respectful apology for his disobedience, represented to his master the extremities to which the besieged were already reduced, and without waiting for a reply pushed on with the utmost vigor for Alhama. The Moorish monarch, alarmed at the approach of so powerful a reinforcement, saw himself in danger of being hemmed in between the garrison on the one side, and these new enemies on the other. Without waiting their appearance on the crest of the eminence which separated him from them, he hastily broke up his encampment, on the 29th of March, after a siege of more than three weeks, and retreated on his capital. [16]

The garrison of Alhama viewed with astonishment the sudden departure of their enemies; but their wonder was converted into joy, when they beheld the bright arms and banners of their countrymen, gleaming along the declivities of the mountains. They rushed out with tumultuous transport to receive them and pour forth their grateful acknowledgments, while the two commanders, embracing each other in the presence of their united armies, pledged themselves to a mutual oblivion of all past grievances; thus affording to the nation the best possible earnest of future successes, in the voluntary extinction of a feud, which had desolated it for so many generations.

Notwithstanding the kindly feelings excited between the two armies, a dispute had wellnigh arisen respecting the division of the spoil, in which the duke's army claimed a share, as having contributed to secure the conquest which their more fortunate countrymen had effected. But these discontents were appeased, though with some difficulty, by their noble leader, who besought his men not to tarnish the laurels already won, by mingling a sordid avarice with the generous motives which had promoted them to the expedition. After the necessary time devoted to repose and refreshment, the combined armies proceeded to evacuate Alhama, and having left in garrison Don Diego Merlo, with a corps of troops of the hermandad, returned into their own territories. [17]

King Ferdinand, after receiving the reply of the duke of Medina Sidonia, had pressed forward his march by the way of Cordova, as far as Lucena, with the intention of throwing himself at all hazards into Alhama. He was not without much difficulty dissuaded from this by his nobles, who represented the temerity of the enterprise, and its incompetency to any good result, even should he succeed, with the small force of which he was master. On receiving intelligence that the siege was raised, he returned to Cordova, where he was joined by the queen towards the latter part of April. Isabella had been employed in making vigorous preparation for carrying on the war, by enforcing the requisite supplies, and summoning the crown vassals, and the principal nobility of the north, to hold themselves in readiness to join the royal standard in Andalusia. After this, she proceeded by rapid stages to Cordova, notwithstanding the state of pregnancy, in which she was then far advanced.

Here the sovereigns received the unwelcome information, that the king of Granada, on the retreat of the Spaniards, had again sat down before Alhama; having brought with him artillery, from the want of which he had suffered so much in the preceding siege. This news struck a damp into the hearts of the Castilians, many of whom recommended the total evacuation of a place, "which" they said, "was so near the capital that it must be perpetually exposed to sudden and dangerous assaults; while, from the difficulty of reaching it, it would cost the Castilians an incalculable waste of blood and treasure in its defence. It was experience of these evils, which had led to its abandonment in former days, when it had been recovered by the Spanish arms from the Saracens."

Isabella was far from being shaken by these arguments. "Glory," she said, "was not to be won without danger. The present war was one of peculiar difficulties and danger, and these had been well calculated before entering upon it. The strong and central position of Alhama made it of the last importance, since it might be regarded as the key of the enemy's country. This was the first blow struck during the war, and honor and policy alike forbade them to adopt a measure, which could not fail to damp the ardor of the nation." This opinion of the queen, thus decisively expressed, determined the question, and kindled a spark of her own enthusiasm in the breasts of the most desponding. [18]

It was settled that the king should march to the relief of the besieged, taking with him the most ample supplies of forage and provisions, at the head of a force strong enough to compel the retreat of the Moorish monarch. This was effected without delay; and, Abul Hacen once more breaking up his camp on the rumor of Ferdinand's approach, the latter took possession of the city without opposition, on the 14th of May. The king was attended by a splendid train of his prelates and principal nobility; and he prepared with their aid to dedicate his new conquest to the service of the cross, with all the formalities of the Romish church. After the ceremony of purification, the three principal mosques of the city were consecrated by the cardinal of Spain, as temples of Christian worship. Bells, crosses, a sumptuous service of plate, and other sacred utensils, were liberally furnished by the queen; and the principal church of Santa Maria de la Encarnacion long exhibited a covering of the altar, richly embroidered by her own hands. Isabella lost no opportunity of manifesting, that she had entered into the war, less from motives of ambition, than of zeal for the exaltation of the true faith. After the completion of these ceremonies, Ferdinand, having strengthened the garrison with new recruits under the command of Portocarrero, lord of Palma, and victualled it with three months' provisions, prepared for a foray into the vega of Granada. This he executed in the true spirit of that merciless warfare, so repugnant to the more civilized usage of later times, not only by sweeping away the green, unripened crops, but by cutting down the trees, and eradicating the vines; and then, without so much as having broken a lance in the expedition, returned in triumph to Cordova. [19]

Isabella in the mean while was engaged in active measures for prosecuting the war. She issued orders to the various cities of Castile and Leon, as far as the borders of Biscay and Guipuscoa, prescribing the repartimiento, or subsidy of provisions, and the quota of troops, to be furnished by each district respectively, together with an adequate supply of ammunition and artillery. The whole were to be in readiness before Loja, by the 1st of July; when Ferdinand was to take the field in person at the head of his chivalry, and besiege that strong post. As advices were received, that the Moors of Granada were making efforts to obtain the co-operation of their African brethren in support of the Mahometan empire in Spain, the queen caused a fleet to be manned under the command of her two best admirals, with instructions to sweep the Mediterranean as far as the Straits of Gibraltar, and thus effectually cut off all communication with the Barbary coast. [20]

FOOTNOTES

[1] Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. iii. pp. 467-469.—Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. cap. 32, 34.

[2] Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 51.—Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. cap. 34.—Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, p. 180.—L. Marineo, Cosas Memorables, fol. 171.—Marmol, Historia del Rebelion y Castigo de los Moriscos, (Madrid, 1797,) lib. 1, cap. 12.

Lebrija states, that the revenues of Granada, at the commencement of this war, amounted to a million of gold ducats, and that it kept in pay 7000 horsemen on its peace establishment, and could send forth 21,000 warriors from its gates. The last of these estimates would not seem to be exaggerated. Rerum Gestarum Decades, ii. lib. 1, cap. 1.

[3] Estrada, Poblacion de Espana, tom. ii. pp. 247, 248.—El Nubiense, Descripcion de Espana, p. 222, nota.—Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, p. 181.— Marmol, Rebelion de Moriscos, lib. 1, cap. 12.

[4] Zuniga, Annales de Sevilla, pp. 349, 362. This occurred in the fight of Madrono, when Don Rodrigo, stooping to adjust his buckler, which had been unlaced, was suddenly surrounded by a party of Moors. He snatched a sling from one of them, and made such brisk use of it, that, after disabling several, he succeeded in putting them to flight; for which feat, says Zuniga, the king complimented him with the title of "the youthful David."

Don Juan, count of Arcos, had no children born in wedlock, but a numerous progeny by his concubines. Among these latter, was Dona Leonora Nunez de Prado, the mother of Don Rodrigo. The brilliant and attractive qualities of this youth so far won the affections of his father, that the latter obtained the royal sanction (a circumstance not infrequent in an age when the laws of descent were very unsettled) to bequeath him his titles and estates, to the prejudice of more legitimate heirs.

[5] Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 52.—L. Marineo, Cosas Memorables, fol. 171.—Pulgar computes the marquis's army at 3000 horse and 4000 foot.—Reyes Catolicos, p. 181.—Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. cap. 34.

[6] Lebrija, Rerum Gestarum Decades, ii. lib. 1, cap. 2.—Carbajal, Anales, MS., ano 1482.—Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 52.—Zurita, Anales, tom. iv. fol. 315.—Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. iii. pp. 252, 253.

[7] Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., ubi supra.—Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, cap. 34.—L. Marineo, Cosas Memorables, fol. 172.

[8] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, ubi supra.—Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, pp. 182, 183.—Mariana, Hist. de Espana, tom. ii. pp. 545, 546.

[9] Bernaldez, Reyes. Catolicos, MS., cap. 52.—Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, ubi supra.—Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. iii. p. 254.

[10] "Passeavase el Key Moro For la ciudad de Granada, Desde las puertas de Elvira Hasta las de Bivarambla. Ay de mi Alhama!