[2] Dozy, iii. 24.
[3] Al Makkari, ii. 69.
[4] When they built a series of fortresses as Zarnora, Simancas, San Estevan.
[CHAPTER III.]
THE MARTYRDOMS AT CORDOVA.
Abdurrahman Ibn Muawiyah landed in Spain with 750 Berber horsemen in May 756. The Khalifate of Cordova may be said to begin with this date, though it was many years before the new sultan had settled his power on a firm basis, or was recognised as ruler by the whole of Moslem Spain.
During the forty-five years of civil warfare which intervened between the invasion of Tarik and the landing of Abdurrahman, we have very little knowledge of what the Christians were doing. The Arab historians are too busy recounting the feuds of their own tribes to pay any particular attention to the subject Christians. But we may gather that the latter were, on the whole, fairly content with their new servitude.[1] The Moslems were not very anxious to proselytize, as the conversion of the Spaniards meant a serious diminution of the tribute.[2] Those Christians who did apostatize—and we may believe that they were chiefly slaves—at once took up a position of legal, though not social, equality with the other Moslems. It is no wonder that the slaves became Mohammedans, for, apart from their hatred for their masters, and the obvious temporal advantage of embracing Islam, the majority of them knew nothing at all about Christianity.[3] The ranks of the converts were recruited from time to time by those who went over to Islam to avoid paying the poll-tax, or even to escape the payment of some penalty inflicted by the Christian courts.[4] One thing is noticeable. In the early years of the conquest there was none of that bitterness displayed between the adherents of the rival creeds, to which we are so accustomed in later times. Isidore of Beja, the only contemporary Christian authority, though he rhapsodizes about the devastations committed by the conquerors, and complains of enormous tributes exacted, yet speaks more fairly about the Moslems[5] than any other Spanish writer before the fourteenth century. "If he hates the conquerors," says Dozy,[6] "he hates them rather as men of another race than of another creed;" and the marriage of Abdulaziz and Egilona awakens in his mind no sentiment of horror.
[1] This was not so when the fierce Almoravides and fiercer Almohades overran Spain in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. See Freeman's "Saracens," p. 168.
[2] As happened in Egypt under Amru. See Cardonne, i. p. 168, and Gibbon, vi. p. 370.