Geography thus came to play a very great part in the history of mediaeval Spain, deciding that though overrun by Romans, Vandals, Visigoths, and Saracens, no conquest should be ever quite complete, since the invaded could always find inaccessible refuges amongst the mountains. A spirit of provincial independence was also fostered, as in Italy[30]—men learning to say first not ‘I am a Spaniard,’ but ‘I am of Burgos,’ or ‘of Andalusia,’ or of ‘Barcelona,’ according to their neighbourhood.
When the Saracens defeated King Rodrigo and his Christian army at the battle of Guadalete,[31] we have seen that they found the subjugation of southern and central Spain an easy matter. Rich towns and districts passed into their hands almost without a blow: the Gothic nobles and their families who should have defended them, weakened by tribal dissensions, fled away northwards to the mountains of Leon and Asturias, while the downtrodden masses that they left behind soon welcomed their new masters.
It was the policy of the Moors to grant a slave his freedom on his open acknowledgement of Allah as the one God and Mahomet as his Prophet, while they allowed those Christians and Jews who refused to surrender their faith to live in peace on the payment of a poll-tax not required from Moslems.
The SPANISH KINGDOMS
1263–1492
The Caliphate of Cordova
The capital of the Saracen kingdom, or ‘Caliphate’, that was destined to survive practically unmolested for some three hundred years, was the town of Cordova, whose capture the Moors believed had been divinely inspired by Allah, since as their army under cover of the darkness swept up to the walls, a terrific hail-storm descended that deadened the clatter of approaching hoofs. From a treacherous shepherd one of the captains learned of a part of the fortifications easy to scale; and, climbing up undetected by means of a fig-tree, he let down his long turban to assist his fellows until a sufficient number had mounted to overpower the guards and open the gates to the main army.
To the Spaniards, thus defeated almost in their sleep, Cordova was a fallen city, disgraced by the presence of infidels; yet these same infidels were to make her luxury and brilliance rival the almost fabulous glories of Bagdad and to win for her culture the grudging admiration of Christian Europe. As we read of her ‘Palace of Pleasures’, ornamented with gold and precious stones, of her woods of pomegranate and sweet almond, of her gardens and perfumed fountains, of her luxurious rest-houses for travellers without the walls, we are back in the atmosphere of some Eastern fairy tale that clings also around the history of her Caliphs, tinging with romance their loves, their hatreds, and their rivalries.
There are other aspects of Moorish Spain hardly less wonderful when contrasted with the haphazard national development of the rest of Europe. Here were agriculture and industry deliberately stimulated by a close and practical study of such branches of knowledge as science and botany, algebra and arithmetic. Arid soil, that under ordinary mediaeval neglect would have been left a desert, became through canals and irrigation a fertile plain, the garden of rice, sugar, cotton, or oranges. Mathematics applied to everyday needs produced the mariner’s compass; scientific brains and intelligent workmen the steel blades of Toledo and Seville, the woven silk fabrics of Granada, and the pottery and velvets of Valencia.
Yet, though knowledge was consciously applied for commercial purposes, the Moors did not set up ‘Utility’ as an idol for their scholars and tell them that only information that brought material wealth in its train was worth having. Philosophy and literature, as well as science, had their lecture-halls: Greece and the East were searched by Caliphs’ orders for manuscripts to fill their libraries; and so world-famous became Cordovan professors that in the twelfth century Christian students hastened to sit at their feet; and the translations of Aristotle by the Arabic professor Averroës became one of the chief sources of authority for the most orthodox ‘schoolmen’.