Musa found, however, that though Tarik had followed up his victory by effectually scattering the defeated Goths, and even taking the capital city, Toledo, there was yet room for another conqueror to operate; so, instead of immediately pursuing Tarik, after he had landed he made a detour through Andalusia and took Medina Sidonia and the rich Roman city of Seville. Then, though gorged with plunder enough to have satisfied a king, he pushed on after and overtook the recreant Tarik at the city of Toledo. “I gave thee orders to make a foray only, then return to Africa,” he said to the veteran, “yet thou hast marched through all this territory without my permission.” The warrior received this reproof in silence, and for a time a truce was made between them; they pushed on their conquests, the one into the northwest, the other into the north and east, until only the Pyrenees separated them from the country of the Gauls.
Between them they brought all Spain under subjection, with the exception of certain remote districts, which they thought too small or too distant to be attacked. But it was within the confines of these small mountain valleys of the northwest that, protected by their rugged barriers, the defeated Goths halted and found a home, and gathered as a nucleus for future forays upon their enemies; as we shall see.
When the country had been practically conquered, the quarrel between Musa and Tarik was renewed; finally it reached the ears of the Calif at Bagdad that his most valiant generals were fighting like jackals over their prey, and he summoned them both to the Orient, there to give account of themselves. It would seem that gratitude was a sentiment entirely foreign to the Arab character, as instanced not only on this occasion, but on many another during the conquest and continuance of the Moors in Spain; for, in spite of his inestimable services to the califate, notwithstanding he had given to the Moslems a new country as their own, and had extended the sway of Islam westward to the Atlantic, Musa was degraded, even sentenced to death, and finally ended his life in poverty.
But despite the severity of Oriental rule, Spain continued a tributary to the Eastern califs until about the middle of the century in which it was conquered, when (as we shall see in due course) an independent califate was established in Cordova. Musa had left as emir in his absence his favourite son Abdalasis, who governed the conquered territory wisely, but had the misfortune, during his father’s absence, to see and fall in love with beautiful Exilona, the unhappy widow of the departed King Roderick. They were married; but as he was a Moslem and she a Christian, soon there began murmurs among their subjects, notwithstanding the generous nature of Abdalasis, who had ever in mind their well-being. These rumours reached the ears of the Calif, cruel and bloodthirsty Suleiman, and he sent orders that the devoted pair should be murdered. His commands were obeyed: both were basely killed while at morning prayers, and the head of Abdalasis was embalmed and sent in a casket to Syria, to the court of the Calif. The unfortunate Musa was in attendance at the court, and when the casket arrived the Calif took out the head of Abdalasis and held it up before his victim:
“Dost thou know this head?” he demanded. Musa gazed in anguish. “Yes,” he murmured, “well do I know it; and may the curse of God light upon him who has destroyed a better man than himself!” The stricken father did not long survive this terrible stroke; but the wrath of Suleiman was not appeased until the other sons of Musa, whom he had left at important posts in Africa, were also numbered with the dead.
Still, despite the ingratitude and cruelty of the Califas, able generals were found to carry on the war for Islam, until even the Pyrenees were leaped and the Moslem hosts invaded France. It seemed as though all Europe would become subject to the bonds of the Arabs, and soon be brought to acknowledge the “one God and Mohammed his prophet.” But in the year 732, twenty-one years after the invasion of Spain, the tide was turned at Tours, when Charles Martel slew thirty thousand Moslems and turned back the remainder, eventually to retreat to the land whence they had come. No other country suited them so well, and here they lived, they and their descendants, from first to last, more than eight hundred years.
CHAPTER VI.
THE WESTERN CALIFATE.