The introduction of the Feudal System into Spain practically dates from the capture of Barcelona by the army of Louis. That system had long before been instituted in France. Its germs, as yet undeveloped, had appeared in many of the regulations of the Visigothic constitution. But the minutely defined and mutual obligations of vassal and lord, and the exact nature of the allegiance due from the noble to his prince as suzerain, had been neither established by prescription nor formulated by law. Nor did its rules ever acquire among the independent races of the Peninsula the force and extent accorded to them elsewhere. The humiliating seigniorial rights claimed and exercised by the dissolute barons of England, France, and Germany were never imposed upon the brave and self-respecting peasantry of Spain. It was long before the hereditary transmission of fiefs was fully recognized in that country.
North of the Pyrenees the duties of feudalism, once assumed, could never be relinquished. In Castile and Aragon the vassal could renounce the service of one protector for that of another, if he had previously surrendered all property received from the former or its pecuniary equivalent. This establishment of feudal institutions in the Gothic March not only assured the permanence of its conquest, but gave the Franks an influence in the affairs of the Peninsula as advantageous to the promotion of Christian success as it was prejudicial to the continuance of Moslem power.
The loss of Barcelona was, as soon became evident. a catastrophe of signal importance, whose consequences seriously affected the prestige and diminished the strength of the Moorish empire in Spain. No explanation has ever been adduced to account for the surprising indifference or culpable neglect of Al-Hakem in allowing the enemies of his faith and his dynasty to wrest from its brave defenders one of the most considerable and prosperous cities in his dominions. A mysterious silence pervades the ancient chronicles in regard to the reasons for his conduct,—so extraordinary; so at variance with the energy of his character; so detrimental to the interests of his kingdom; so destructive to his hopes of future greatness. Experience had proved him to be endowed with many of the qualities of a daring and active leader. From his very youth, the excitement of war had been to his fiery spirit a favorite and exhilarating pastime. His resources were unlimited, his army well equipped and numerous. So far as we have any information, the remainder of his kingdom was at peace. In case the Christian host was too powerful to encounter in battle, the sea offered a broad and unobstructed highway for the transportation of supplies and reinforcements. Time was not wanting, for the siege lasted seven months. Whether the menacing attitude of the King of the Asturias, or some obscure domestic sedition, which, obscured by the crowning exploit of the Frankish crusade, has escaped the notice of historians, is responsible for this apparently unaccountable and suicidal apathy, must remain forever a matter of conjecture. But whatever was the cause, the misfortune was irreparable. The iron grasp of the Frank never slackened its hold. The colony became a principality, the principality a kingdom, which, in time, consolidated with other provinces into the monarchy of Aragon, led the van of the Christian armies in the War of the Reconquest.
All authorities agree, however, that the Emir was on the point of marching to the relief of Barcelona when information reached him of its surrender. Unwilling to disband his army without an attempt to at least partially regain his lost prestige, he proceeded to Saragossa, and then, following the course of the Ebro, succeeded in retaking Huesca, Tarragona, and some other places of inferior importance. The rebel chieftains, Hassan and Bahlul, to whose treasonable artifices is mainly to be credited the loss of Eastern Spain, were captured and beheaded. No demonstration was made before Barcelona, a fact that would seem to suggest either the inferiority of the troops in numbers and equipment or the prudence or fears of their commander.
The religious enthusiasts of the capital had seen, with alarm and disgust, the accession of Al-Hakem. While not eminent for piety like his father, he, on the other hand, had manifested no particular hostility to the theological faction. Its members, however, were not his favorites. He was devoted to amusements and practices abhorrent to the principles openly preached and secretly neglected by these rigid precisians. His frequent intoxication, a vice which outraged public opinion and provoked the contempt of the conscientious Moslem, made the palace the scene of orgies that were the reproach and the scandal of the capital. From childhood he had been immoderately devoted to sensual indulgence. The pastime of the chase, which involved the employment of animals declared unclean by the Koran, occupied no small part of his leisure. A ferocious temper, an exaggerated idea of his authority, an implacable spirit, and a merciless severity in the infliction of punishment for even trifling offences increased the terror with which he was regarded by noble, peasant, and theologian. But these sins were venial when compared with the indifference with which he treated the saints and the doctors upon whom Hischem had bestowed distinguished honors and unbounded confidence. Those who had formerly been entrusted with important secrets of state, which they were able to use for their personal advantage, were now excluded from the Divan. Instead of entering the royal presence without ceremony, they were compelled to wait the pleasure of their master in the antechambers. The donations from the public treasury, which had been bestowed with unstinted hand upon every specious pretext, were now withheld. Degraded in the popular estimation, humbled in pride, diminished in wealth, derided by the court, but still retaining the sympathy of the masses, the fanatics of rival sects began to overlook their mutual animosity in the hope of restoring the vanished importance of their order, and to entertain designs against the life as well as the government of Al-Hakem.
The scheming and disappointed Malikite faquis, whose ecclesiastical character, assisted by a talent for imposture, had caused the multitude to attribute to them supernatural powers, were the chief promoters of the conspiracy. The prestige of a royal name being considered essential to their success, they approached Ibn-Shammas, son of Abdallah, and a cousin of the Emir, and, finding him apparently favorable to their designs, openly tendered him the crown. The ambition of that chieftain, however, was not sufficiently strong to induce him to compromise his loyalty. Dissembling his indignation at the presumption of those who could think him capable of such flagrant ingratitude and treason, he demanded a list of the principal conspirators as an indispensable condition of his compliance. The deputation, headed by a faqui named Yahya, readily agreed to this, and a night was designated when the information would be given. Meanwhile, Ibn-Shammas informed the Emir of what had happened, and when Yahya and his companions were introduced into his apartments, Ibn-al-Khada, the private secretary of Al-Hakem, was already there concealed behind a curtain, and ready to write down the names as fast as they were communicated. The list included many of the most considerable nobles and citizens of Cordova, and the secretary, fearing lest the conspirators, to magnify their importance, might include his own name among the number, an act which would insure his destruction, designedly allowed the reed with which he was writing to scratch upon the paper. The traitors instantly took the alarm; the house of Ibn-Shammas was deserted in a moment; all implicated who had time to escape fled precipitately from the city, and the others, to the number of seventy-two, were crucified.
The year 805 witnessed the institution of an alliance between the Emirate of the West and the newly founded kingdom of the Edrisites in Africa, destined to exercise a marked influence upon the fortunes of the former power, and whose close relations in peace and war were not finally sundered until the kingdom of Granada was incorporated into the Spanish monarchy. Several years previously a noble Syrian named Edris, a fugitive like Abd-al-Rahman from the persecution of the Abbasides, had sought a refuge in the mountain defiles and desert wastes of Western Africa. Without friends, money, or influence, he nevertheless received a hearty welcome from the tribes of the Atlas. His manly traits and chivalrous bearing soon secured for him the esteem of his protectors, and, from a penniless refugee, he rose by degrees to be the chieftain of a clan, the founder of a nation, and the head of a dynasty. It was to his son and successor Edris that Al-Hakem now sent an embassy to felicitate him upon his accession, and to propose an alliance which might be employed to contract the dominions and weaken the power of the detested tyrants of the East. The importance of the occasion was disclosed by an escort of five hundred Andalusian nobles, and the interchange of magnificent presents. The embassy was splendidly entertained by the African monarch, and a treaty concluded which, by its provisions for mutual support and constant hostility against the common enemy, accomplished much towards the consolidation and perpetuity of the Moslem power in the West. Two years afterwards the city of Fez was founded. Its population, composed largely of Christians, Jews, fire-worshippers, and idolaters, excited the wonder and contempt of the pious Mussulmans who visited it; and the incessant strife promoted by the political adventurers and zealots of the various forms of faith, who had established their abode within its walls, augured ill for the future peace or prosperity of the Edrisite capital.
While absent on the expedition to Eastern Spain, the mind of Al-Hakem had been disturbed by tidings of another outbreak at Toledo. Yusuf, the son of Amru, who, through paternal fondness and the partiality of the Emir, had been exalted to a position to the discharge of whose responsibilities his experience and qualifications were wholly inadequate, had signalized his promotion by flagrant and repeated acts of tyranny and insolence. The Toledan populace, seditious by inheritance and practice, and which, from time immemorial, had been ready to assert, on the slightest provocation, the dangerous privilege of resistance, at the perpetration of some outrage of unusual atrocity ran to arms, attacked the palace, and overpowered a detachment of the guard. The principal citizens, dreading the consequences of an insurrection, interposed their good offices between the governor and the mob, and, with great difficulty, prevented the sack of the palace and the death of its master. But the latter, far from appreciating either the efforts of his benefactors or the peril which he had just escaped, meditated and planned, without concealment or precaution, a bloody and merciless revenge. Informed of his intentions, the nobles deprived him of his office without ceremony, and threw him into prison. A messenger was sent to Al-Hakem to acquaint him with the facts, and to explain the danger which justified the adoption of such extreme and arbitrary measures. The Emir, with every appearance of kindness, excused the violence of his subjects; gave orders for the removal of the obnoxious Yusuf; and reinstated, at his own solicitation, Amru as wali; the grateful inhabitants returned to their avocations, and the city once more assumed the appearance of its former tranquillity.
But the habitual defiance of his authority by the Toledans rankled in the breast of Al-Hakem. The city had long been the focus of insurrection, the rallying-point of the discontented, the head-quarters of every turbulent and ambitious chieftain. Not even the metropolis itself surpassed it in its influence on the politics of the kingdom. The audacity of its citizens and the pride of its clergy concurred in supporting its extravagant pretensions to supremacy. The limited area enclosed by its walls had always been occupied by a dense population, among whose members the Christians largely preponderated, and over whose minds the traditions of the Visigothic monarchy exerted a power constantly distrusted and feared by every Moslem ruler who exercised jurisdiction over its territory. The Arab historians have repeatedly asserted, with every appearance of truth, that no other body of subjects within the dominions of Islam were so infected with the spirit of mutiny and disorder as the populace of Toledo. Even the descendants of renegades who had renounced their creed and their nationality—a class whose religious zeal and uncompromising fidelity are proverbial—were not insensible to the time-honored legends and historical souvenirs that recalled, on every side, the glorious events and vanished grandeur of the ancient capital of the Visigoths. The Moslems, who had settled principally in the environs, were overawed by the insolence of their neighbors, who, although their tributaries, maintained all the haughtiness that ordinarily attaches to superior birth and exalted station. Once more installed as governor, Amru exerted all his tact to allay the apprehensions of the people, who feared that his paternal pride might impose upon them a heavy penalty for their former disobedience. By every expression of solicitude, by every show of partiality and consideration, he sought to regain their confidence. He privately assured their leaders of his approval of, and sympathy with, their efforts to obtain their independence and resist the imposition of tyrannous exactions and unjust laws. He even went so far as to denounce the Emir, and to promise his own co-operation in case of future unwarrantable encroachment upon the lives and liberty of the Toledans by the despotic court of Cordova. Thoroughly imposed upon by his duplicity, the masses, as well as the nobles and the priesthood, regarded him as their benefactor, and bestowed upon their crafty governor every mark of honor and esteem. Then, instructed by Al-Hakem, Amru represented that, as the ordinary practice of billeting soldiers upon the families of the citizens was a serious grievance and productive of much disorder, this inconvenience could be obviated by the erection of a strongly fortified citadel, which he suggested would also be of incalculable value in the assertion of popular rights in future insurrections. Public approval was readily obtained; the fortress rose on the most commanding point of the city; the wealthy contributed of their means, the poor donated their labor, to aid in its construction; the advantages of location and the resources of engineering skill conspired to make its defences almost impregnable. A powerful garrison was introduced, and Al-Hakem was notified that the time had finally arrived for the gratification of his long-meditated vengeance.
A despatch was now sent to the frontier directing one of the officers who commanded in that quarter to petition for reinforcements, in view of a pretended demonstration of the Franks. This was accordingly done; and a force of several thousand troops, commanded by the young prince, Abd-al-Rahman, heir to the throne, who was assisted by the counsels of three viziers of age and experience, marched out of Cordova, apparently destined for service in the Pyrenees. When the army reached Toledo, it was informed that the anticipated danger had been exaggerated; that the enemy had withdrawn from the vicinity of the frontier, and consequently that all prospect of hostilities had disappeared. While encamped in the vicinity, the officers received a visit from the governor, who was accompanied by a number of the most prominent citizens. The deputation was received and entertained with distinction and hospitality, and the guests were delighted with the politeness, the condescension, and the precocious talents of their prospective sovereign, who had not yet attained the age of fifteen years. Then, at the suggestion of Amru, an invitation was extended to the prince to make the city his home until his departure, a proposal which was accepted with well-feigned reluctance. Preparations were made for a sumptuous banquet. In the long list of guests appeared the names of the most distinguished nobles, the most opulent citizens, the most eminent leaders, who were either suspected of disaffection or had openly signalized their zeal for the popular cause, either by open resistance or by instigation to rebellion. When the hour designated for the festivities approached, the guests were introduced, one by one, through a postern, where they successively fell by the hands of the soldiers. As each party arrived, the equipages and attendants were sent to the opposite gate of the fortress, there to await the reappearance of their masters. An immense crowd, attracted by the novelty of the occasion and the presence of royalty, surrounded the citadel. Among the spectators, a physician, shrewder or more suspicious than his companions, had remarked the ominous stillness that reigned within the walls, and the fact that of all the guests who had been known to enter none had been seen to leave, although the sun was now far past the meridian. A bystander directed his attention to a cloud of vapor faintly discernible above the ramparts as an evidence that the festivities had not ceased. The experience of the practitioner at once detected the cause, and raising his hands in horror, he exclaimed: “Wretch! that is not the smoke which proceeds from the preparation of a banquet; it is the vapor from the blood of your murdered brethren!”