Moorish Remains in Spain

by Albert Frederick Calvert

MOORISH REMAINS IN SPAIN

INTRODUCTORY

THE conquest of Spain by the Moors, and the story comprised in the eight centuries during which they wielded sovereignty as a European power, forms a romance that is without parallel in the history of the world. Under Mohammedan rule Spain enjoyed the first and most protracted period of comparative peace and material prosperity she had ever known. She had been plundered by Carthage and Phœnicia, ground beneath the iron heel of Rome, devastated and enslaved by those Christianised but corrupt barbarians, the Visigoths. All the evils and demoralisation arising from successive waves of bloody conquest and decadent voluptuousness had been sown in the breast of Spain. The squandered might of Carthage had left the country a prey to the vigorous Roman; the degenerate Roman had been banished by the rugged, victorious Goth, who, after two centuries of security and sensual ease, was to be made subject to the warlike and enlightened Moor. Once more the land was to be overrun and the face of the country was to be scarred with fire and the sword; once more the people were to learn to serve new masters and conform to new laws. Of a truth the last state must have seemed worse than the first to the Romanised Spaniards. Carthage had brought chains, but it had also introduced artificers and a form of Government; the Roman eagles had been accompanied by Roman engineers and road-builders; the Goths erected upon the broken altars of mythology temples to the living God. But it now seemed that the whips of ancient foes were to be replaced by the scorpions of their new taskmasters; the Christianity which the East had sent them was to be uprooted by the Eastern infidels.

Such must have been the prospect before Spain, and even before the rest of Europe, when Tarik returned in 710 to Ceuta, from a marauding expedition upon the coast of Andalusia, and reported to Musa, the son of Noseyr, the Arab Governor of North Africa, that the country was ripe for conquest and well worth the hazard of the cast. Twenty years later the Moslems had overrun Spain, captured Bordeaux by assault and advanced to the conquest of Gaul. It is passing strange to reflect that these far-reaching, epoch-making events had not been undertaken as the result of a deep-laid scheme of national expansion or religious enterprise. According to tradition the foundation of the Moslem supremacy in Spain was instigated by the hatred of a single traitor, Count Julian, the Governor of Ceuta, and his treachery was inspired by the dishonour of one young girl—Julian’s daughter, Florinda.

At the beginning of the eighth century, when the Moors had extended their possessions up to the walls of Ceuta, which was held for Roderick, King of Spain, by Count Julian, the Count, in accordance with the custom among the Gothic nobility, had sent his daughter to the Court of Roderick, at Toledo, to be educated among the Queen’s gentlewomen in a manner befitting her rank and lineage. The rest is the old story of a beautiful, unprotected girl, a lascivious guardian, and a father thirsting for vengeance. So far Count Julian had defended Ceuta against the Moors with unbroken success, now he came to Toledo to relieve the king of the custody of his daughter, and repay the breach of trust which Roderick had committed by making a compact with the king’s enemies. On the eve of his departure from the capital, the king requested the Count to send him some hawks of a special variety that he desired for hunting purposes, and the vengeful noble pledged himself to supply his master with hawks, the like of which he had never seen.

But Count Julian found the Saracenic hawks less keen for the hunting he had in view than he expected. That old bird of prey, Musa, listened to the alluring tales of the richness and beauty of Spain, but doubted the good faith of his long-time enemy, who proposed that the Moors should invade this promised land in Spanish ships, lent to them for the purpose. But the love of conquest and the lust of loot, which had inspired and sustained the Arab arms in all their territorial campaigns, overcame the natural hesitancy of the Moorish Governor, and in 710 Musa despatched Tarik with a small expedition to spy out the state of the Spanish coast. So successful was the mission, and so rich the plunder they brought back, that in the following year he adventured an army of 7,000 men under Tarik for the spoliation of Andalusia. Tarik, who landed at the rock of Gibraltar—Gebal Tarik, which still bears his name—captured Carteya, and encountered the army of Roderick, who had hurried from the North of his dominions to repel the invaders, on the banks of the Guadalete.

Washington Irving, in the Conquest of Spain, has related, in his brilliantly picturesque style, the old legend of the prophecy of Roderick’s overthrow and the mystery surrounding his death. The king was proof against the solemn warnings of the old warders of the tower of Hercules,—the tower of “jasper and marble, inlaid in subtle devices, which shone in the rays of the sun,”—wherein lay the secret of Spain’s future, sealed by a magic spell, and guarded by a massive iron gate, and secured by the locks affixed to it by every successive Spanish king since the days of Hercules. Roderick came not to set a new lock upon the gate, but to burst the bolts of the centuries and reveal the mystery that his predecessors had gone down into their graves without solving. All day long his courtiers urged him vainly against his own undoing, and the custodians laboured at the rusty locks, and at evening he entered the mighty, outer hall, rushed past the bronze warder, penetrated the inner chamber, and read the inscription attached to the casket, which Hercules had deposited in the gem-encrusted tower. “In this coffer is the mystery of the Tower. The hand of none but a King can open it; but let him beware, for wonderful things will be disclosed to him, which must happen before his death.” In a moment the lid is prized open, the parchment, folded between plates of copper, is brought into the light of day, and the king has read the motto inscribed upon the border: “Behold, rash man, those who shall hurl thee from thy throne and subdue thy Kingdom.”

Beneath the motto is drawn a panorama of horsemen, fierce of countenance, armed with bows and scimitars. As the king gazes wonderingly upon the picture, the sound of warfare rushes on his ear, the chamber is filled with a cloud, and in the cloud the horsemen bend forward in their saddles and raise their arms to strike. Amazed and terrorised, Roderick and his courtiers drew back and “beheld before them a great field of battle, where Christians and Moors were engaged in deadly conflict. They heard the rush and tramp of steeds, the blast of trump and clarion, the clash of cymbal, and the stormy din of a thousand drums. There was the flash of swords and maces and battle axes, with the whistling of arrows and hurling of darts and lances. The Christian quailed before the foe. The infidels pressed upon them, and put them to utter rout; the standard of the Cross was cast down, the banner of Spain was trodden under foot, the air resounded with shouts of triumph, with yells of fury, and the groans of dying men. Amidst the flying squadrons, King Roderick beheld a crowned warrior, whose back was turned towards him, but whose armour and device were his own, and who was mounted on a white steed that resembled his own war horse, Orelia. In the confusion of the fight, the warrior was dismounted and was no longer to be seen, and Orelia galloped wildly through the field of battle without a rider.”