The absence of Okbah encouraged the spirit of rebellion, ever rife in the Peninsula. He had hardly returned before the arts of intrigue and the discontent of the populace raised up a formidable rival to his authority. Abd-al-Melik-Ibn-Kattan, who had formerly been Emir, now usurped that office. In the civil war which followed, the fortunes of Abd-al-Melik soon received a powerful impulse by the death of his competitor at Carcassonne.
We now turn to the coast of Africa, a region which from first to last has exerted an extraordinary and always sinister influence over the destinies of the Mohammedan empire in Europe. The intractable character of the Berbers, and their aversion to the restraints of law and the habits of civilized life, had defied the efforts of the ablest soldiers and negotiators to control them. In consequence, the dominant Arab element was not disposed to conciliate savages who recognized no authority but that of force, and imposed upon them the most oppressive exactions, prompted partly by avarice and partly by tribal hatred. The impetus of Berber insurrection was communicated by contact and sympathy to the settlements of their kindred in Spain, where the spirit of insubordination under a less severe government made its outbreaks more secure, and, at the same time, more formidable. Obeydallah, the present Viceroy, was influenced by these feelings of scorn even more than a majority of his countrymen. A true Arab, educated in the best schools of Syria, of energetic character and bigoted impulses, he regarded the untamable tribesmen of Africa as below the rank of slaves. While collector of the revenue in Egypt he had provoked a rebellion of the Copts on account of an arbitrary increase of taxes, levied solely because the tributaries were infidels. Under his rule the lot of the Berbers became harder than ever. Their flocks, which constituted their principal wealth, were wantonly slaughtered to provide wool for the couches of the luxurious nobility of Damascus. Their women were seized, to be exposed in the slave-markets of Cairo and Antioch. Their tributes were doubled at the caprice of the governor, in whose eyes the life of a misbeliever was of no more consideration than that of a wild beast, for, being enjoyed under protest, it could be forfeited at the will of his superior. Day by day the grievances of the Berbers became more unendurable, and the thirst for liberty and vengeance kept pace with the ever-increasing abuses which had provoked it. At first the tribes, while professedly Mussulman, in reality remained idolaters, fetich-worshippers, the pliant tools of conjurers and charlatans. Over the whole nation a priesthood—by snake-charming, by the interpretation of omens, by spurious miracles, by the arts of sorcery—had acquired unbounded influence; and the names of these impostors, canonized after death, were believed to have more power to avert misfortune than the invocation of the Almighty. In time, however, the zealous labors of exiled Medinese and Persian non-conformists had supplanted the grosser forms of this superstition by a religion whose fervor was hardly equalled by that displayed by the most fanatical Companion of Mohammed. The scoffing and polished Arabs of Syria, of whom the Viceroy was a prominent example, Pagan by birth and infidel in belief and practice, were sedulously represented as the enemies of Heaven and the hereditary revilers of the Prophet, whom it was a duty to destroy. These revolutionary sentiments, received in Africa with applause, were diffused through Spain by the tide of immigration, in which country, as elsewhere, they were destined soon to produce the most important political results. The Berbers, wrought up to a pitch of ungovernable fury, now only awaited a suitable opportunity to inaugurate the most formidable revolt which had ever menaced the Mohammedan government of Africa. In the year 740 an increased contribution was demanded of the inhabitants of Tangier, whose relations with the savages of the neighboring mountains had prevented the conversion of the former to Islam. A division of the army was absent in Sicily, and the Berbers, perceiving their advantage, rose everywhere against their oppressors. They stormed Tangier, expelled the garrisons of the sea-coast cities, elected a sovereign, and defeated in rapid succession every force sent against them. The pride and resentment of the Khalif Hischem at last impelled him to despatch a great army against his rebellious subjects. It numbered seventy thousand, and was commanded by a distinguished Syrian officer, Balj-Ibn-Beshr, who was ordered to put to death without mercy every rebel who might fall into his hands and to indulge the troops in all the license of indiscriminate pillage. Marching towards the west, the Syrian general encountered the Berbers on the plain of Mulwiyah. The naked bodies and inferior weapons of the insurgents provoked the contempt of the soldiers of the Khalif, who expected an easy victory; but the resistless impulse of the barbarians supplied the want of arms and discipline, and the Syrians were routed with the loss of two-thirds of their number. Some ten thousand horsemen, under command of Balj, cut their way through the enemy and took refuge in Ceuta. The Berbers, aware of the impossibility of reducing that place, ravaged the neighborhood for miles around, and, having blockaded the town on all sides, the Syrians, unable to escape or to obtain provisions, were threatened with a lingering death by famine.
Abd-al-Melik, Emir of Spain, was a native of Medina. Half a century before he had been prominent in the Arab army at the battle of Harra, the bloody prelude to the sack of the Holy City and the enslavement and exile of its citizens. To him, in vain, did the Syrian general apply for vessels in which to cross the strait. The Arab chieftain, bearing upon his body many scars inflicted by the spears of Yezid’s troopers and who had seen his family and his neighbors massacred before his face, now exulted in the prospect of an unhoped-for revenge; and, for the complete accomplishment of his purpose, he issued stringent orders against supplying the unfortunate Syrians with supplies. The sympathy of Zeyad-Ibn-Amru, a wealthy resident of Cordova, was aroused by the account of their sufferings, and he imprudently fitted out two vessels for their relief; which act of insubordination having been communicated to the Emir, he ordered Zeyad to be imprisoned, and, having put out his eyes, impaled him, in company with a dog, a mark of ignominy inflicted only on the worst of criminals.
The news of the decisive victory obtained by the Berbers over the army of the Khalif was received with pride and rejoicing by all of their countrymen in Spain. The efforts of the missionaries, aided by the fiery zeal of their proselytes, had infused into the population of the North, composed largely of African colonists, a spirit of fanaticism which threatened to carry everything before it. In a moment the Berbers of Aragon, Galicia, and Estremadura sprang to arms. Uniting their forces they elected officers; then, organized in three divisions, they prepared to dispute the authority of the Emir in the strongholds of his power. One body marched upon Cordova, another invested Toledo, and the third directed its course towards Algeziras, with designs upon the fleet, by whose aid they expected to massacre the Syrians in Ceuta and to collect a body of colonists sufficient to destroy the haughty Arab aristocracy of the Peninsula and found an independent kingdom, Berber in nationality, schismatic and precisian in religion.
And now were again exhibited the singular inconsistencies and remarkable effects of the fatal antagonism of race. The critical condition of Abd-al-Melik compelled him to implore the support of his Syrian foes, whom he hated with far more bitterness than he did his rebellious subjects, and who were also thoroughly cognizant of his feelings towards them as well as of the political necessity which prompted his advances. A treaty was executed, by whose terms the Syrians were to be transported into Spain and pledged their assistance to crush the rebellion, and, after this had been accomplished, the Emir agreed to land them in Africa upon a territory which acknowledged the jurisdiction of the Khalif. Hostages selected from their principal officers were delivered by the half-famished refugees, and they embarked for Andalusia, where the policy of the government and the sympathy of the people supplied them with food, clothing, and arms, and their drooping spirits soon revived. These experienced soldiers, united with the forces of Abd-al-Melik, attacked and routed with ease, one after another, the three Berber armies. All of the plunder which the latter had collected fell into their hands, in addition to that secured by expeditions into the now undefended country of their enemies. His apprehensions concerning the Berbers having been removed, Abd-al-Melik now became anxious to relieve his dominions of the presence of allies whose success rendered them formidable. But the allurements of soil and climate had made the Syrians reluctant to abandon the beautiful land of Andaluz,—the region where they had accumulated so much wealth, the scene where their efforts had been crowned with so much glory. Disputes arose between their leader and the Emir concerning the interpretation of the treaty; the Syrian general, conscious of his power, lost no opportunity to provoke the fiery temper of Abd-al-Melik; and, at last, taking advantage of a favorable occasion, he expelled the latter from his capital. Balj, elected to the viceroyalty by his command, proceeded at once to extend and confirm his newly acquired authority. The hostages confined near Algeziras were released, and their accounts of harsh treatment enraged their companions, who recalled their own sufferings and the inhumanity of Abd-al-Melik during their blockade in Ceuta. With loud cries they demanded the death of the Emir. The efforts of their officers to stem the torrent were futile; a mob dragged the venerable prince from his palace, and, taking him to the bridge outside the city of Cordova, crucified him between a dog and a hog, animals whose contact is suggestive of horrible impurity to a Mussulman and whose very names are epithets of vileness and contempt. Thus perished ignominiously this stout old soldier, who could boast of the purest blood of the Koreish; who had witnessed the wonderful changes of three eventful generations; who had seen service under the standard of Islam in Arabia, Egypt, Al-Maghreb, France, and Spain; who had bravely defended the tomb of the Prophet at Medina, and had confronted with equal resolution the mail-clad squadrons of Charles upon the banks of the Rhone; who had twice administered in troublous times the affairs of the Peninsula; and who now, long past that age when men seek retirement from the cares of public life, still active and vigorous, was sacrificed, through his own imprudence, to the irreconcilable hatred of tribal antagonism. An act of such atrocity, without considering the prominence of the victim, the nationality of the participants, or the degree of provocation, was, independent of its moral aspect, highly impolitic and most prejudicial to the interests of the revolutionists. The Syrians became practically isolated in a foreign country. The sons of Abd-al-Melik, who held important commands in the North, assembled a great army. Reinforcements were furnished by the governor of Narbonne, and the fickle Berbers joined in considerable numbers the ranks of their former adversaries.
At a little village called Aqua-Portera, not far from Cordova, the Arabs and Berbers attacked the foreigners, who had enlisted as their auxiliaries a number of criminals and outlaws. In the battle which followed the latter were victorious, but lost their general Balj, who fell in a single combat with the governor of Narbonne. The Syrians, whose choice was immediately confirmed by the Khalif, elected as his successor, Thalaba-Ibn-Salamah, a monster whose name was afterwards stained with acts of incredible infamy. His inhumanity was proverbial. His troops gave no quarter. The wives and children of his opponents, whose liberty even the most violent of his party had respected, were enslaved. Other victims he had previously exposed at auction before the gates of Cordova, under circumstances of the grossest cruelty and humiliation. The most illustrious of these were nobles of the party of Medina. By an exquisite refinement of insult he caused them to be disposed of to the lowest, instead of the highest, bidder, and even bartered publicly for impure and filthy animals the descendants of the friends of Mohammed, members of the proudest families of the aristocracy of Arabia. But the atrocities of Thalaba had already alienated many of the adherents of his own party as well as terrified those of the opposite faction, who had no mercy to expect at the hands of a leader who neither observed the laws of war nor respected the faith of treaties. Upon the application of these citizens, most of them men of high rank and influential character, the Viceroy of Africa sent Abu-al-Khattar to supersede the sanguinary Thalaba. He arrived just in time to rescue the unhappy Berbers, many of them Moslems, who were already ranged in order for systematic massacre. His power was soon felt; and by banishing the leaders of the insurgents; by granting a general amnesty; by an ample distribution of unsettled territory; and by conferring upon the truculent strangers a portion of the public revenues, an unusual degree of peace and security was soon assured to the entire Peninsula. In accordance with a policy adopted many years before, the various colonists were assigned to districts which bore some resemblance, in their general features, to the land of their nativity, a plan which offered the additional advantage of separating these turbulent spirits from each other, thus rendering mutual co-operation difficult, if not impossible, in any enterprise affecting the safety or permanence of the central power.
The first months of the administration of Abu-al-Khattar were distinguished by a degree of forbearance and charity unusual amidst the disorder which now prevailed in every province of the Moslem empire. But his partisans had wrongs to avenge, and the Emir had not the moral courage to resist the importunate demands of his kindred. An unjust judicial decision provoked reproach; insult led to bloodshed; the fiery Maadites rushed to arms; and once more the Peninsula assumed its ordinary aspect of political convulsion and civil war. Al-Samil and Thalaba, two captains of distinction, obtained the supremacy; the Emir was imprisoned, then rescued, and, after several ineffectual attempts to regain his authority, put to death. Having overpowered its adversary, the triumphant Maadite faction gratified its revengeful impulses to the utmost by plunder, torture, and assassination. At length the condition of affairs becoming intolerable, and no prospect existing of relief from the East, where the candidates of rival tribes contended for the tempting prize of the khalifate, a council of officers was convoked, and Yusuf-Abd-al-Rahman-al-Fehri was unanimously chosen governor of Spain.
This commander had, by many years of faithful service in France, by strict impartiality in his decisions, and by a bravery remarkable among a people with whom the slightest sign of cowardice was an indelible disgrace, won the respect and admiration of his contemporaries. His lineage was high, his person attractive, his manners dignified and courteous. He had defended Narbonne against the power of Charles Martel, whose army, flushed with victory and animated by the presence of the great Mayor of the Palace himself, had been unable to shake his confidence or disturb his equanimity. But his eminent qualifications for the position to which he was now called did not depend upon his former services and his personal merit so much as upon the absence which had kept him from all the entanglements and intrigues of faction. Thus it was that the fiercest partisans hailed his election as a harbinger of peace and concord; a wise stroke of policy that might reconcile the antagonistic pretensions of the nobles of Damascus and Medina; curb the lawlessness of the Berbers; and restore the Emirate of the West to that tranquillity and prosperity it had at long intervals enjoyed, and of which the memory, like a half-forgotten tradition, alone remained. This illegal act of the officers was without hesitation sanctioned by the Khalif Merwan, who prudently overlooked the spirit of independence implied by its exercise on account of its evident wisdom and the imperative necessity which had dictated it.
The disorders of the unhappy Peninsula had, however, become incurable under the present conditions of government. All the skill and experience of Yusuf were exhausted in fruitless attempts at the adjustment of territorial disputes and the pacification of feuds which a generation of internecine conflict had engendered. An insurrection broke out in Septimania, a province hitherto exempt from similar disturbances. Ahmed-Ibn-Amru, wali of Seville, whom Yusuf had removed from the command of the fleet, a chief of the Koreish, whose vast estates enabled him to surpass the magnificence of the Emir himself, and an aspirant for supreme power, organized and headed a formidable conspiracy. His name was associated with the early triumphs of Islam, for he was the great-grandson of the ensign who had borne the standard of Mohammed at the battle of Bedr. Prompted by unusual audacity, which was confirmed by the possession of wealth, ability, and power, he asserted that he had received the commission of the Abbasides as Viceroy of Spain. The Asturians, emboldened by the quarrels of their foes, leaving their mountain fastnesses, began to push their incursions far to the southward. The entire country was engaged in hostilities. Every occupation but that of warfare was suspended. The herdsman was robbed of his flocks. The fertile fields were transformed into a barren waste. On all sides were the mournful tokens of misery and want; from palace and hut rose the moan of the famishing or the wail for the dead. Intercourse between the neighboring cities, alienated by hostility or fearful of marauders, ceased. The doubtful tenure of authority, dependent upon the incessant changes of administration, made it impossible for the Christians to ascertain to whom tribute was rightfully due. and this confusion of interests often subjected them to the injustice of double, and even treble, taxation. At no time in the history of Spain, since the irruption of the Goths, had such a condition of anarchy and social wretchedness prevailed; when the inspiration of a few Syrian chieftains brought the existing chaos to an end, by the introduction of a new ruler and the re-establishment of a dynasty whose princes, the tyrants of Damascus, had hitherto reflected little more than odium and derision on the Moslem name.
The history of Spain under the emirs presents a melancholy succession of tragic events arising from antipathy of race, political ambition, religious zeal, and private enmity. An extraordinary degree of instability, misrule, distrust, and avarice characterized their administration. The revolutions which constantly afflicted the Khalifate of Damascus exercised no inconsiderable influence over the viceregal capitals of Kairoan and Cordova. The Ommeyade princes of Syria lived in constant apprehension of death by violence. The methods by which they had arisen in many instances contributed to their overthrow. The assassin of yesterday often became the victim of to-day. The perpetration of every crime, the indulgence in every vice, by the Successors of the Prophet, diminished the faith and loyalty of their subjects and seriously affected the prestige and divine character believed to attach to their office. The subordinates necessarily shared the odium and ignominy of their superiors. The Emir of Spain labored under a twofold disadvantage. He held under the Viceroy of Africa, while the latter was appointed directly by the Khalif. This division of authority and responsibility was not conducive to the interests of good government, social order, or domestic tranquillity. The people of the Peninsula, subject to the caprices of a double tyranny, could not be expected to feel much reverence for the supreme potentate of their government and religion thirteen hundred miles away. With the accession of each ruler arose fresh pretexts for the exercise of every resource of extortion. The rapacity of these officials rivalled in the ingenuity of its devices and the value of its returns the exactions of the Roman proconsuls. The methods by which the majority of them maintained their power provoked universal execration. Under such political conditions, loyalty, union, and commercial prosperity were impossible. The ancient course of affairs—an order which had existed for three hundred years—had been rudely interrupted. Even under favorable auspices the foundation of a government and the reorganization of society would have been tasks fraught with many perplexities and dangers. The Visigothic empire had, it is true, been subdued, but its national spirit, its religion, and its traditions remained. The changes of Moslem governors were sudden and frequent. The average duration of an emir’s official life was exactly twenty-seven months. It required the exertion of the greatest wisdom, of the most enlightened statesmanship, to avert the calamities which must necessarily result from the collision between a heterogeneous populace subjected suddenly to the will of a still more heterogeneous mass of foreigners; to reconcile the interests of adverse factions; to appease the demands of wild barbarians unaccustomed to be denied; to decide alike profound questions of policy and frivolous disputes connected with the various gradations of ecclesiastical dignity, of hereditary rank, of military distinction, and of social precedence. The inflexibility of the Arab character, the assumed superiority of the Arab race, the unquenchable fires of tribal hatred, the necessity of maintaining the rights accorded under solemn treaties to the vanquished, enhanced a hundred-fold the difficulties which confronted the sovereign. As an inevitable consequence a chronic state of disorder prevailed. The authority of the Khalifs of Damascus was in fact but nominal, and was never invoked except to countenance revolt or to assure the obedience of those who faltered in their loyalty to the emirs, the actual rulers of Spain. But, despite these serious impediments, the genius of the Arabian people advanced rapidly in the path of civilization, while the dense and sluggish intellect of the northern barbarians, who, in their origin, were not less ignorant, remained stationary. It took Spain, under the Moslems, less than half a century to reach a point in human progress which was not attained by Italy under the popes in a thousand years. The capacity of the Arab mind to absorb, to appropriate, to invent, to develop, to improve, has no parallel in the annals of any race. The empire of the khalifs included an even greater diversity of climate and nations than that of Rome. The ties of universal brotherhood proclaimed by the Koran; the connections demanded by the requirements of an extended commerce; the intimate associations encouraged by the pilgrimage to Mecca, awakened the curiosity and enlarged, in an equal degree, the minds of the Moslems of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Yet more important than all was the effect of the almost incessant hostilities waged against the infidel. By its constantly varying events, its fascinations, its thrilling excitements, its dangers, its victories, defeats, and triumphs, war has a remarkable tendency to expand the intellectual faculties, and thereby to advance the cause of truth and promote the improvement of every branch of useful knowledge. The advantages derived from travel, experience, and conquest the Moslems brought with them into the Spanish Peninsula. Under the emirate, however, these were constantly counteracted by the ferocious and indomitable character of the Berbers. The latter did not forget the part they had taken in the Conquest. It was one of their countrymen who had led the victorious army. It was the irresistible onset of their cavalry which had pierced the Gothic lines on the Guadalete. The rapidity of their movements, the impetuosity of their attacks, had awed and subdued, in a few short months, the populous states of a mighty empire. Scarcely had they begun to enjoy the pleasures of victory before the greed of an hereditary enemy of their race snatched from their hands the well-earned fruits of their valor. Their commander was imprisoned, insulted, and disgraced. Their plunder was seized. Those who evinced a desire for a sedentary life were assigned to the bleak and sterile plains of La Mancha, Aragon, and Galicia, while the Arabs of Syria and the Hedjaz divided among themselves the glorious regions of the South, which tradition had designated as the Elysian Fields of the ancients. The arrogant disposition of these lords heaped upon their Berber vassals every outrage which malice could devise or tyranny execute. The accident of African extraction was sufficient to exclude the most accomplished and capable soldier from an office of responsibility under the Khalifate of Damascus. In Spain, as in Al-Maghreb, the fairest virgins of the Berber camps were torn from the arms of their parents to replenish the harems of the Orient. Under such circumstances, it is not strange that the acute sensibilities of a proud and independent people should have been deeply wounded by the infliction of every fresh indignity, and their disaffection endanger the stability of the new government and imperil the institutions of religion itself by fostering the violent spirit of tribal animosity, that ominous spectre which constantly haunted with its fearful presence the society of city and hamlet, and stalked grimly and in menacing silence in the very shadow of the throne.