The Mahommedans, you may remember, even pressed on over the Pyrenees, those mountains dividing France from Spain, after they had helped in breaking up the kingdom of the Visigoths in Spain itself; but they were defeated and driven, back as soon as they came up against a strong opposition. They were able to overrun Spain just because there was no strong opposition there. But these Moslems themselves did not form any durable government in Spain. They had none of the ability for governing and organising that the Romans had shown. They had no sooner swept over the Spanish peninsula, as they did, than a Christian kingdom independent of them was proclaimed in that region of Spain which you may still see marked on the map as Asturias. But it extended much beyond the bounds of the present province so-called, reaching from the Pyrenees away to the western extremity of the peninsula.
The story of Spain all this while was cut off and separated from the whole great story and did not enter intimately into its making, rather as that peninsula itself is cut off from the rest by the Pyrenees. It is a story, however, which we cannot afford to neglect because there came a time, a little later, that is to say in the sixteenth century, when Spain was very masterful all over the world and played the leading role in the story. But during all these eight centuries of her crusade with the Moslem she took but little part.
We have observed that the Pyrenees, beside being a formidable obstacle and boundary in themselves, were the home of a very independent and unconquered people called the Basques. They are there still, still a people rather apart. Probably they are survivors of one or the other of those early Celtic invasions which swept over Europe and of which there survive also remnants in Brittany and in Wales. They still speak a language unrelated to that of the French on the one side or the Spanish on the other.
And what was the story of this Spanish peninsula, thus separated from the rest? We have in the first place to try to understand what the "Moorish conquest," as it is called, meant. It is said that the Moors "swept over" the country. It is a good phrase to express what happened if we take it in the right sense. They "swept over" the country, but that does not at all imply that they swept all the former inhabitants, who probably were chiefly of the Visigothic race, before them. Spain is a country of many mountain ranges. To bear that fact in mind will help us to understand what happened.
These mountain ranges provided refuges into which the inhabitants could resort in time of invasion, and whence they could come forth again and take up their lives much as before when the sweeping of the invasion had passed over. Spain was far too large a country for the Moslems who came in to settle and to govern, and it was too much cut up by the mountains. The invaders had not any very settled government or organisation among themselves. They were a mixed company of soldiers, Arabs, Syrians, and Africans. They had no settled purpose in their invasion. They seem not to have known what to do with it when they had achieved it.
They achieved it easily, because there was no real resistance, as we have seen, until they crossed into France. But though the Christians of Spain could not combine to resist them, the Christians had some settled interests in common, to hold them together. They had the Church, and they had the combination of their own Gothic laws with the Roman law which they found in Spain when they came there. They had, therefore, some influences to bring them together into that unity which gives strength, and as their numbers grew they became powerful.
We should bear in mind that they had not long been converted to Christianity when the Moslems came upon them. The religion of Christ had no very strong hold over them. The consequence was that, when they found that their conquerors would let them live far more comfortably in the country if they adopted the religion of Mahomet, there were many who were quite willing to do so. The conquerors do not seem to have used their power cruelly, and it is likely that the people in general were in quite as good a position and quite as happy under the new rule as under the old. The Jews, particularly, of which nation there were very many in Spain, were almost certainly happier, for the Christian government had persecuted and oppressed them and the Moslems were far more tolerant. The Moslems, indeed, whether in Spain or Asia, or even in Africa, were probably quite as advanced in general culture as the Christians. Europe was indebted to them for a better knowledge of medicine than the Western world had acquired before. The game of chess was given us by them, and when we say "check-mate" we are really saying "Sheik mat"=the sheik, or king, is dead. By the tenth century the Christian power from the north was beginning to press heavily upon the Mahommedans in the south, and this pressure southward led to the foundation of the Kingdom of Castile, in the centre of Spain. Another kingdom which had been independent, that of Leon, was absorbed by Castile. This name of Castile is said to be derived from castillas, or castles, because the Christians, as they spread southwards, made forts or castles, as they went, which they held as outposts against the Mahommedans. All through the next, the eleventh century, in the course of which William the Conqueror came to Britain, the war between Christian and Moslem went on, a continual Crusade, in Spain. We may notice that twice, when the Moslems were hard pressed, they summoned others of their own creed in Africa to come to their assistance. On each occasion of the coming of these new forces the Christians were forced back.
Waning power of the Moors
But the energy and the organisation which made the strength of these counter-attacks seem to have spent themselves quickly. Always there was more unity among the Christians and a more steady purpose. They came on again to the attack and found the Moslem force less able to resist.
A very important gain for the Christians was the taking of Cordova by Ferdinand III., King of Castile and Leon, in 1236. Cordova was the chief city of Mahommedan Spain. There was a Caliph, or head of the Moslem Church, at Cordova, independent of the Caliph at Mecca. It is rather like the position of the Pope at Rome and the Patriarch at Constantinople in the Christian Church at that time.