Al-Samh, having completed his preparations, emerged from the mountain passes at the head of a formidable army. After a siege of a month, Narbonne, the capital of Septimania, surrendered to the Moslems, who obtained from the churches and convents an immense booty, most of which had been deposited by fugitive Spanish prelates in those sanctuaries as places of inviolable security. Almost without a blow, the fortresses of Béziers, Maguelonne, and Carcassonne accepted the liberal conditions of Mohammedan vassalage. The flying squadrons of Arab cavalry now spread ruin and alarm over the beautiful valley of the Garonne. So attractive was the country and so lax the discipline, that it was with some difficulty the Emir succeeded in collecting the scattering detachments of his army, which had wandered far in search of plunder; and, resuming his march, he at length invested the important city of Toulouse, the capital of Aquitaine. The siege was pushed with vigor, and the inhabitants, reduced to extremity, were already meditating a surrender, when the Duke approached with a force greatly superior to that of the Moslems. The latter, disheartened at the sight of such an overwhelming multitude, were disposed to retreat, when the Emir, actuated by a spirit worthy of the ancient heroes of Islam, roused their flagging courage by an eloquent harangue, in which he artfully suggested both the prizes of victory and the promises of the Faith. As the two hosts ranged themselves in martial array, the priests distributed among the Franks small pieces of sponge which had received the blessing of the Pope; amulets more serviceable, it appeared, than the thickest armor, for we are assured by the veracious chroniclers of the age that not a Christian soldier who carried one of these valuable relics lost his life in the battle. The contest was long and obstinate; the Moslems performed prodigies of valor; but they had lost the religious fervor which had so often rendered their arms invincible; and anxiety for the safety of their spoils had greater influence upon them than the security of their conquest or the propagation of their religion. The issue long remained doubtful; but the Emir having exposed himself too rashly fell pierced by a lance; and his army, completely routed, retired from the field with the loss of two-thirds of its number. Abd-al-Rahman-al-Ghafeki, an officer of high rank and distinguished reputation, was invested with the temporary command by his associates, and conducted the shattered remnant of the Moslems to Narbonne. Intent on plundering the treasures of the enemy’s camp, which contained the bulk of the portable wealth of Septimania, the Franks could not be induced to reap the full advantages of victory. The retreat was conducted with consummate skill, for the peasantry, aroused by the news of the disaster, swarmed in vast numbers around the retreating Moslems, who were often compelled to cut their way through the dense and ever increasing masses, which immediately closed in and harassed their rear.
This was the first serious reverse which had befallen the hitherto invincible arms of Islam. The tide had begun to turn, and the implacable enmity cultivated for centuries between the two contending nations of Arabia—which neither the precepts of a congenial form of faith, nor military fame, nor uninterrupted conquest, nor the possession of fabulous wealth, nor the enjoyment of the fairest portions of the globe could eradicate—was now to exhibit to the world the splendid weakness of the Successors of Mohammed. A glance at the origin and progress of this barbarian feud, which survived the impetuous ardor of proselytism, and had nourished for ages its hereditary vindictiveness, and, arising in distant Asia, was destined to be revived with undiminished violence upon the plains of Aragon and Andalusia, is essential to a proper understanding of the causes to which are to be attributed the downfall of the Moslem Empire of the West.
As already mentioned, irreconcilable hostility had existed from time immemorial between the inhabitants of Northern and Southern Arabia. Due to a difference of origin, and probably based upon invasion and conquest in a prehistoric age, this race-prejudice had been aggravated by a feeling of mutual hatred and contempt, derived from the different avocations of the people of Yemen and those of the Hedjaz, the peaceful merchants and the lawless rovers of the Desert. The Maadites, to whom the Meccans belonged, were shepherds and brigands. They prided themselves upon being the aristocracy of Arabia; and the thrifty and industrious dwellers of the South, the Kahtanites, who saw nothing degrading in the tillage of their fields, in the care of their valuable date plantations, and in the profits of commerce, could, in the consciousness of superior wealth and culture, readily endure the scorn of their neighbors, whose gains were obtained by overreaching their guests, by extortions from pilgrims to the Kaaba, and by sharing in the plunder of caravans. The Medinese, whose origin was partly Jewish, whose pursuits were sedentary, and whose affiliations connected them with the trading communities of Yemen, were classed with the Kahtanites by the children of Maad. From this mutual antagonism the religion of Mohammed received its greatest impulse and the power which enabled it to overturn all its adversaries; and from it, also, are to be traced the misfortunes which befell the empire of Islam even before it was firmly established; which made every country and province in its wide dominions the scene of civil strife and bloodshed; which profaned with insult and violence the shrines of the most holy temples; which annihilated whole dynasties by the hand of the assassin; and which, far more potent than the iron hand of Charles Martel and the valor of the Franks, lost by a single stroke the sceptre of Europe. Hence arose the disputes which terminated in the murder of Othman and its terrible retribution, the sack of the Holy Cities; the intrigues and controversies which resulted from the election of Ali; the death of Hosein; the insurrections of the fanatical reformers of Persia; the proscription of the Ommeyades; the perpetual disorders which distracted the Emirate of Africa. In Spain also, whither had resorted so many of the fugitives of Medina and their Syrian conquerors, the smouldering embers of national prejudice and religious discord were rekindled. The most sacred ties of nationality, of religion, or of kindred were powerless to counteract this deep-rooted antipathy, which seems inherent in the two divisions of the Arab race. The most noble incentives to patriotism, the pride of victory, the alluring prospects of commercial greatness, of literary distinction, of boundless dominion, were ignored in the hope of humiliating a rival faction and of gratifying a ruthless spirit of revenge. At different times—such is the strange inconsistency of human nature—the Maadites became voluntary dependents of the kings of Yemen and Hira. In an age of remote antiquity, the Himyarite dialect spoken in the South had been supplanted by the more polished idiom of the Hedjaz.
The intensity and duration of the hatred existing between Maadite and Yemenite are inconceivable by the mind of one of Caucasian blood, and are without precedent, even in the East. It affected the policy of nations; it determined the fate of empires; it menaced the stability of long-established articles of faith; it invaded the family, corrupting the instincts of filial reverence, and betraying the sacred confidences of domestic life. Upon pretexts so frivolous as hardly to justify a quarrel between individuals, nations were plunged into all the calamities of civil war. A difference affecting the construction of a point of religious discipline was sufficient to assemble a horde of fanatics, and devote whole provinces to devastation and massacre. A petty act of trespass—the detaching of a vine-leaf, the theft of a melon—provoked the most cruel retaliation upon the community to which the culprit belonged. The Maadite, inheriting the haughty spirit of the Bedouin marauder, despised his ancestors if there was in their veins a single drop of the blood of Kahtan; and, on the other hand, under corresponding conditions of relationship, the Yemenite refused to pray even for his mother if she was allied to the Maadites, whom he stigmatized as a race of barbarians and slaves. And yet these were divisions of the same people; with similar tastes and manners; identical in dress and personal aspect; speaking the same tongue; worshipping at the same altars; fighting under the same banners; frequently united by intermarriage; actuated by the same ambitions; zealous for the attainment of the same ends. The investigation of this anomaly, an ethnical peculiarity so remarkable in its tenacity of prejudice, and which, enduring for more than twenty-five hundred years, the most powerful motives and aspirations of the mind have failed to abrogate, presents one of the most interesting problems in the history of humanity.
In the train of Musa had followed hundreds of the former inhabitants of Medina, who carried with them bitter memories of ruined homes and slaughtered kinsmen. The impression made by these enthusiastic devotees—defenders of the sepulchre of the Prophet, and eloquent with the traditions of the Holy City—upon the savage tribes of Africa was far more deep and permanent than that of the homilies of Musa delivered under the shadow of the scimetar. Their bearing was more affable, their treatment of the conquered more lenient, their popularity far more decided, than that of the haughty descendants of the Koreish. With the memory of inexpiable wrong was cherished an implacable spirit of vengeance. The name of Syrian, associated with infidelity, sacrilege, lust, and massacre, was odious to the pious believer of the Hedjaz. His soul revolted at the tales of ungodly revels which disgraced the polished and voluptuous court of Damascus. The riotous banquets, the lascivious dances, the silken vestments, the midnight orgies, and above all the blasphemous jests of satirical poets, struck with horror the abstemious and scrupulous precisians of Medina and Aden. The Ommeyade noble was looked upon by them as worse than an apostate; a being whose status was inferior to that of either Pagan, Jew, or Christian. The feelings of the descendants of the proud aristocracy of Mecca towards their adversaries were scarcely less bitter. They remembered with contempt the obscure origin and plebeian avocations of the first adherents of the Prophet. Their minds were inflamed with rage when they recalled the murder of the inoffensive Othman, whose blood-stained garments, mute but potent witnesses of his sufferings, had hung for many months in the Great Mosque of Damascus. With indignation was repeated the story of the cowardly attempt against the life of Muavia, and of the poisoned thrust which brought him to an untimely end. With but few exceptions, the Emirs of Spain were stanch adherents of the line of the Ommeyades, and never failed to discriminate against the obnoxious Medinese and their posterity. The latter retaliated by secret treachery; by open rebellion; by defeating vast schemes of policy before they were matured; by encouraging the dangerous encroachments of the Asturian mountaineers. This sectional strife early disclosed itself in the face of the enemy by fomenting the quarrel between Tarik and Musa. It thwarted the plans of the great Arab general, whose enterprising genius and towering ambition aimed at the subjugation and conversion of Europe. It armed the hands which struck down in the sanctuary the wise and capable Abd-al-Aziz. It retarded the progress of Abd-al-Rahman, filled his camp with brawls and confusion, increased the insubordination of his troops, and gave time for the recall of the barbarian hosts of Charles Martel from the confines of Gaul and Germany. In the Arabian population the Yemenite faction largely preponderated, especially in Eastern and Western Spain, which were almost exclusively settled by its adherents. In consequence of their numerical superiority and political importance, they claimed, certainly with some appearance of justice, the right to be governed by an emir whose views and sympathies were in accordance with their own. The court of Damascus, thoroughly cognizant of the uncertain hold it maintained upon a distant and wealthy province, inhabited by a turbulent rabble whose animosity towards the family of the Ommeyades was thinly disguised by lukewarm professions of loyalty and occasional remittances of tribute, had the sagacity to humor its prejudices, and to appoint to the Spanish Emirate governors of the dominant party. In the course of forty years, but three of the rulers of Spain out of twenty traced their origin to the detested posterity of Maad. This politic course preserved in its allegiance the wealthy provinces of the Peninsula, until the influence of the Yemenites and the Berbers was hopelessly weakened by the civil wars preceding the foundation of the Western Khalifate. The effects of the latter, by the serious disturbances they promoted and the consequent injury inflicted upon the integrity of the Mohammedan empire, had awakened the hopes and revived the faltering courage of the terrified nations of Christendom.
There is perhaps no recorded instance of a feud so obscure in its origin, so anomalous in its conditions, so momentous in its consequences, as this rancorous antagonism of the two divisions of the Arabian people. It illustrates more clearly than an entire commentary could do, the inflexibility of purpose, a trait conspicuous in the Bedouin, which could sacrifice all the advantages and pleasures of life, all the hopes of eternity, to the destruction of an hereditary foe. For centuries, in an isolated and arid country of Asia, certain hordes of barbarians, ignorant of the arts, careless of luxury, proud, intrepid, and independent, had pursued each other with unrelenting hostility. With the advent of a Prophet bringing a new revelation, the most potent influences which can affect humanity are brought to bear upon the nation. A whole people emigrates; is in time united with many conquered races; appreciates and accepts the priceless benefits of civilization; becomes pre-eminent in science, in letters, in all the arts of war and government, in all the happy and beneficent pursuits of peace. But amidst this prosperity and grandeur the hereditary feuds of the Desert remained unreconciled. Neither the denunciations of the Koran nor the fear of future punishment were able to more than temporarily arrest this fatal enmity. Islam was in a few generations filled with dangerous schismatics, whose tribal prejudice was, more than devotion to any dogma, the secret of their menacing attitude towards the khalifate. The mockery and sacrilege of the princes of Damascus, scions of the ancient persecutors of Mohammed, were caused by equally base, selfish, and unpatriotic motives. And the people of Medina, without whose timely aid—induced, it is not to be forgotten, by this perpetual feud between Kahtanite and Maadite—-Islam could never have survived, were doomed henceforth to a career of uninterrupted misfortune. Their city, which had sheltered the Prophet in his adversity, and had received his blessing, was sacked and laid waste; and in the sacred mosque which covered his remains were stabled the horses of the Syrian cavalry. The unhappy exiles, pursued in every land by the impositions and cruelty of the tyrants of Syria, were, despite their frequent efforts to throw off the yoke, finally cowed into submission. In the long series of rulers, from Sad-Ibn-Obada, surnamed The Perfect, the champion of Medina, whose election as the first of the Khalifs the overbearing insolence of the Koreish was scarcely able to prevent, to the effeminate Boabdil, his lineal descendant, the conduct of the Defenders of the Prophet is marked by errors of judgment, by want of tact, by defiance of law, and by ill-timed enterprises prolific of disaster. No city, however, has placed a deeper impress upon the history of nations and the cause of civilization, since the immortal age of Athens, than Medina. Its influence, although often of a negative character, while it was the support of Islam in its period of weakness, was a serious impediment in its day of power. The benefits it conferred upon a handful of struggling proselytes were more than counterbalanced by the discord it promoted in the camps and councils of Irac, Syria, Africa, and Spain.
The census taken by Al-Samh had disclosed the vast preponderance of Christians who still adhered to their ancient faith, and the fears of the Khalif Yezid were aroused by the presence of so many hostile sectaries in the heart of his empire. To obviate this evil, and to assure the future permanence of Moslem supremacy, he devised a scheme which indicates a degree of worldly wisdom and political acuteness rare in the councils of that age. He proposed that the Christian population of Spain and Septimania be deported and settled in the provinces of Africa and Syria, and the territory thus vacated be colonized with faithful Mussulmans. Thus Spain would have become thoroughly Mohammedan, and the establishment of armed garrisons in Gaul would have been supplemented by the aid of a brave and active peasantry, affording an invaluable initial point for the extension of the Moslem arms in the north and east of Europe. But this was by no means the greatest advantage of this bold and original stroke of statesmanship. The penetrating eye of Yezid had already discerned the dangerous character of the mountaineers of the Asturias, who had preserved the traditions and inherited the valor of the founders of the Gothic monarchy. The removal of this threatening element was equivalent to its extirpation, and would probably have preserved for an indefinite period the Moslem empire of Spain in its original integrity. The province of Septimania, supported by the powerful armies of a united and homogeneous nation, could then have defied the desultory assaults of the Franks. The exiles, scattered in distant lands, must by force, or through inducements of material advantage, have gradually become amalgamated with their masters; their children would have professed the prevailing faith; and the progenitors of that dynasty whose policy controlled the destinies of Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries would have disappeared from the knowledge of man. The severity of this project, dictated partly by religious zeal, but principally by political acumen, would have been excessive, yet its beneficial effects upon the fortunes of Islam must have been incalculable. But the mind of Al-Samh, incapable of appreciating the paramount importance of the enterprise, despising the Goths of the sierras as savages, and, like the majority of his countrymen, underestimating their resolution and capacity for warfare, induced him to discourage the plan of the Khalif, by representing that it was unnecessary, on account of the daily increasing numbers of converts to the doctrines of the Koran. The successful inauguration of a similar policy by Cromwell in Ireland nine hundred years afterwards, whose completion, fortunately for the rebellious natives, was defeated by his death, demonstrates the extraordinary sagacity of the sovereign of Damascus in devising a measure of statecraft whose execution portended such important consequences to modern society, and which has, for the most part, escaped the notice of the historians of the Moorish empire. Before departing upon his unfortunate expedition, Al-Samh had left Anbasah-Ibn-Sohim, one of his most trusty lieutenants, in charge of the affairs of the Peninsula. The latter, learning of the rout of Toulouse, without delay sent a large body of troops to the North to cover the retreat of the defeated army; a precaution rendered unnecessary by the generalship of Abd-al-Rahman, who was now recognized as emir, the choice of his comrades being soon afterwards confirmed by the Viceroy of Africa. The Christians of Gothic Gaul and the Asturias, greatly elated by the disaster which had befallen their enemies, soon manifested greater hostility than ever, and it required all the firmness and prudence of Abd-al-Rahman to restrain them. The insurrection which began to threaten the power of the Moslems in the trans-Pyrenean province was, however, crushed before it became formidable; the mountaineers were driven back into their strongholds; the suspended tribute was collected, and an increased contribution was levied upon such communities as had distinguished themselves by an obstinate resistance.
Although the idol of his soldiers, Abd-al-Rahman was not a favorite with the great officials of the government. They admired his prowess, and were not disposed to depreciate his talents, but they hated him on account of his popularity, for which he was mainly indebted to his lavish donations to the troops. It was his custom, as soon as the royal fifth had been set apart, to abandon the remainder of the spoil to the army, a course so unusual as to provoke the remonstrances of his friends, while it elicited the applause and secured the undying attachment of the soldiery. Application was made by the malcontents to the Viceroy of Africa, Baschar-Ibn-Hantala, for the removal of Abd-al-Rahman, under the pretext that the Moslem cause was becoming endangered through the prevalence of luxury introduced by his unprecedented munificence. The charges were pressed with such vigor that they prevailed, and Anbasah-Ibn-Sohim was raised to the emirate. Abd-al-Rahman—such was the confidence of his opponents in his integrity and patriotism—was reinstated in the government of Eastern Spain, which he had held previous to the battle of Toulouse. With the submission and piety of a faithful Moslem, he congratulated his successor, swore fealty to him, and retired without a murmur to reassume a subordinate position in a kingdom which he had ruled with absolute power. Anbasah soon displayed by active and salutary measures his fitness for his high office. The administration had become to some extent demoralized by the easy temper and prodigal liberality of Abd-al-Rahman, and Anbasah’s first care was to remodel the fiscal department and adopt a new and more exact apportionment of taxation. Carefully avoiding any appearance of injustice to the tributary Christians, he divided among the immigrants—who now, in larger numbers than ever before, poured into Spain from Africa and the East—the lands which were unoccupied, and had hitherto served as pastures to the nomadic Berbers, whose traditions and habits discouraged the selection of any permanent habitation. While inflexibly just to the loyal and obedient, Anbasah punished all attempts at insurrection with a rigor akin to ferocity. Some districts in the province of Tarragona having revolted on account of real or fancied grievances, the Emir razed their fortifications, crucified the leaders, and imposed upon the inhabitants a double tax, both as a punishment and a warning. In order to keep alive the respect for the Moslem name, he sent frequent expeditions into Gaul, whose operations, conducted upon a limited scale, were mainly confined to the destruction of property and the seizure of captives.
The Jewish population of the Peninsula, relieved from the vexatious laws of the Goths and greatly increased in wealth and numbers by foreign accessions, had already risen to exalted rank in the social and political scale under the favorable auspices of Mohammedan rule. It enjoyed the highest consideration with the Arabs, whose success had been so largely due to its friendly co-operation. This community, endowed with the hereditary thrift of the race, rich beyond all former experience, still ardently devoted to a religion endeared by centuries of persecution, and by the deeply grounded hope of future spiritual and temporal sovereignty, was now startled by the report that the Messiah, whose advent they had so long and so patiently awaited, had appeared in the East. The highly imaginative temperament of the Oriental, and the phenomenal success of the founders of religious systems in that quarter of the world, had been productive of the rise of many designing fanatics, all claiming the gifts of prophecy and miracle, and all secure of a numerous following in an age fertile in impostors. In this instance, the Hebrew prophet, whose name was Zonaria, had established his abode in Syria; and thither in multitudes the Spanish Jews, abandoning their homes and carrying only their valuables, journeyed, without questioning the genuineness of their information or reflecting upon the results of their blind credulity. No sooner were the pilgrims across the strait, than the crafty Emir, declaring their estates forfeited by abandonment, confiscated the latter, which included some of the finest mansions and most productive lands in the Peninsula. This fanatical contagion extended even into Gaul, and the Jewish colonists of that region hastened to join their Spanish brethren in their pilgrimage of folly, only to realize, when too late, that they had lost their worldly possessions without the compensating advantage of a celestial inheritance.
Having regulated the civil affairs of his government to his satisfaction, the eyes of Anbasah now turned towards the North, where lay the tempting prize of France, coveted by every emir since the time of Musa. The prestige of the Arabs had been materially impaired by the serious reverse they had sustained before Toulouse. The first encounter with the fiery warriors of the South whom fear had pictured as incarnate demons, and whose prowess was said to be invincible, had divested the foes of Christianity of many of the terrors which exaggerated rumor had imparted to them. Of the numerous fortified places in Septimania which had once seemed to be pledges of a permanent Mohammedan settlement, the city of Narbonne alone remained. Its massive walls had easily resisted the ill-directed efforts of a barbarian enemy, unprovided with military engines, and unaccustomed to the protracted and monotonous service implied by a siege, while its vicinity to the sea rendered a reduction by blockade impracticable. Thus, protected by the natural advantages of its location and by the courage of its garrison, Narbonne presented the anomaly of an isolated stronghold in the midst of the enemy’s country. Traversing the mountainous passes without difficulty the Emir took Carcassonne, a city which had hitherto enjoyed immunity from capture; and by this bold stroke so intimidated the inhabitants, that the whole of Septimania at once, and without further resistance, returned to its allegiance to the Khalif. No retribution was exacted for past disloyalty, as Anbasah was too politic not to appreciate the value of clemency in a province held by such a precarious tenure; the people were left as before to the untrammelled exercise of their worship; but the unpaid tribute was rigorously collected, and a large number of hostages, chosen from the noblest families of the Goths, were sent to Spain.