From the time of the Cæsars, that picturesque chain of mountains now known as the Serrania de Ronda, which traverses the southern part of the Peninsula, has been the scene of insurrection and of lawless deeds which no government has ever been able to thoroughly suppress. The proverbial reluctance of the mountaineer to conform to established laws was, in this region especially, encouraged by the savage character of the country, which, to all unacquainted with its intricate paths and gloomy fastnesses, offered an aspect as forbidding as it was pregnant with danger. The population of these mountains, in love of freedom, in strength of body, in military prowess, was the counterpart of that of the Asturias, while in graceful bearing, in beauty of form and feature, and, above all, in intelligence, it far excelled the uncouth barbarians of the North. It united the various qualities of Roman courage, Punic shrewdness, and Arab temperance and agility. The difficulty of enforcing obedience to the constituted authority was vastly increased by the close relations maintained by even the most remote settlements, leagued together in a confederacy which was, in all but name and acknowledged leadership, an independent republic. The brigand who swooped down upon the flocks of the Roman shepherd, or pillaged the hut of the Visigothic peasant, has his worthy counterparts to-day in the smuggler and highwayman. It has not been many decades since the robber chieftain of the Serrania de Ronda levied blackmail on the posts and convoys of the Spanish government; and the contraband traffic of that region at present exceeds in importance the legitimate trade of any other district of equal area and wealth in the Peninsula.

On the slope of this mountain range, not far from Malaga, lived in the reign of Mohammed a youth of fiery temper and dissolute habits, named Omar-Ibn-Hafsun. His father, descended from a distinguished Gothic family, like many others, had renounced his faith rather with a view to future advantage than from belief in the doctrines of Islam. His son, concerned in frequent broils with the hot-headed peasantry of the neighborhood, had, while but a child, obtained a most unenviable reputation for cruelty and violence. At length, in an encounter with one of his most redoubtable antagonists, the latter paid the penalty of his rashness with his life. Ibn-Hafsun fled to the sierra and joined a gang of banditti, but was eventually seized by the authorities and scourged into insensibility. Escaping from the clutches of the law, he sought the presence of his father, who disowned him and drove him from his home. Knowing that he could not for a great while longer elude the search of the officers who were scouring the country in all directions, he embarked for Tahort in Africa, where he found refuge in the house of a tailor who knew of his family but was ignorant of his recent history, and who willingly accepted him as an apprentice. Here he was soon after recognized by an acquaintance, and, apprehensive of being denounced as a fugitive from justice and surrendered for execution, he left his benefactor and secretly returned to Andalusia. Impelled, perforce, to the profession of an outlaw, he assembled a number of adventurous spirits, repaired an old Roman fort on the summit of Mount Bobastro, and entered upon a life of rapine. The great plain stretching from the foot of the sierra to the capital was soon at his mercy. His band increased with the fame of his exploits; the cities of Andalusia trembled at his name; the governor of the province, who had ventured to attack him with a strong body of regular troops, was reduced to the humiliation of seeing his soldiers routed and his camp pillaged by a handful of daring marauders. This official, whose incompetency was presumed to be the cause of his misfortune, was removed, but his successor, an experienced veteran, fared no better. After a time, the rebel was surrounded by a strong force under the vizier Haschim, and compelled to surrender. His bravery and talents had so excited admiration of the latter that he induced the Emir to offer him an important command in the army. Between the acceptance of this unexpected favor and confinement in a dungeon there could be no hesitation in making a choice, and the former brigand was duly commissioned an officer of the emirate. In many engagements with the insurgents and mountaineers of the North, he bore himself with a self-respecting dignity little to be expected from his former lawless behavior. Admired by his general, respected by his comrades, and feared by his enemies, there seemed to unfold before him the flattering prospect of speedy promotion and all the honors and wealth incident to a distinguished military career. But the petty jealousies of rival courtiers could not brook the sudden elevation and rising prosperity of this new favorite of Haschim. The party opposed to the vizier employed every means to annoy and humiliate the haughty renegade. The governor of the city, under various pretexts, compelled him to constantly move his quarters. The purveyors of the army, instigated by the enemies of his patron, regularly furnished him with rations unfit for consumption. His complaints were ineffectual; even his patron told him that he must avenge his own wrongs. Exasperated by such treatment, above all as it was in no wise deserved, and unwilling to longer submit to the insults that every day became less endurable, Ibn-Hafsun deserted, and again sought the protecting solitudes of the Serrania de Ronda. His band was soon reassembled; the fortress of Bobastro, which the prudence of Mohammed had greatly strengthened, was surprised; and the daring partisan, in the space of a few weeks, became once more the idol of the mountaineers and the terror of the peasantry of Andalusia. But his service in the army of the Emir had wrought a remarkable change in the sentiments and conduct of the outlaw. He proclaimed himself the champion of freedom, the avenger of all who had suffered from the extortions and injustice of the reigning family. In this capacity he was recognized as the representative of the renegades, the Christians, and the Berbers, who thus formed an incongruous, but, for a time, an effective alliance against the dominant Arab aristocracy. By assuming the character of a defender of the oppressed, he invested his cause with a national importance, and relieved it, to a great extent, from the disgraceful imputation of brigandage. The members of his band were subjected to the most severe restraint. Robbery and insubordination were punished with instant death. The entire mountain district was gradually included within his jurisdiction, and security of property and life, such as that region never knew before, existed. It became a common saying among the Andalusians that a woman loaded with silver might cross any portion of the Serrania de Ronda without the least danger of molestation. Such a demonstration of security would have been elsewhere impracticable, even in the populous districts of the emirate patrolled by a vigilant police, and its attempt would have invited certain death in the distant and unprotected provinces of the empire.

In the control of his soldiers, Ibn-Hafsun adopted all those politic expedients which raise commanders to popularity and renown,—inexorable justice, unstinted liberality, prompt recognition of efficient service, merciless punishment of serious infractions of discipline. His increasing power invited the adherence of malcontents who held responsible posts under the government, among them not a few renegades, those pests of every administration whose credulous weakness heeded their protestations or trusted their loyalty. In the year 886, Ibn-Hafsun was assisting one of these traitors in the defence of Alhama against the prince Al-Mondhir. The bandit chieftain had been wounded in a sally, and the garrison was about to surrender, when news reached the prince of the death of his father, and necessitated his immediate return. This unhoped-for change in his fortunes offered an opportunity which the wily Ibn-Hafsun was not slow to appreciate. By plausible representations he induced many towns to submit to his authority, and the accession of Al-Mondhir found him at once confronted with a powerful enemy, whose military genius and fertility of resource promised a long and doubtful struggle for supremacy.

The death of Mohammed was sudden and peaceful. His reign of thirty-four years was the most stormy and unfortunate of any hitherto directed by the Ommeyade monarchs. In addition to manifold political calamities, it was afflicted with a drought severe beyond all hitherto mentioned in the annals of Spain, with famine and pestilence, and with earthquakes that increased the mortality to an appalling degree.

This epoch is conspicuous for the shameful degradation of the Ommeyade dynasty of Spain. In its general features, it also presents an epitome of the evils which afflicted the Hispano-Arab domination under every ruler and in every age. The inherent vices of the Moslem system; the irreconcilable character of the constituents of Moslem society—their turbulence, malignity, and faithlessness—were discernible alike under the administration of Abd-al-Aziz, the first of the emirs, and of Boabdil, the last of the kings. The condition of Mohammed at times seemed desperate. The majority of his subjects were in rebellion. Twenty years of warfare had failed to subdue Toledo, which, with the extensive territory subject to it, was now practically independent. The power of the Christians was increasing daily. Their boundaries were steadily advancing southward. Their banners had even been seen from the walls of the capital. The Franks had obtained a permanent foothold in the Gothic March, forever lost to the jurisdiction and the faith of Islam. The mighty kingdom which had once reached from the banks of the Garonne to the Mediterranean had shrunk to the dimensions of an insignificant principality. Septimania, Leon, Aragon, Catalonia, and a large portion of Castile were in the hands of the enemy. In the North, the walis of the scattered fortresses which still preserved a nominal allegiance to the Emir were secretly leagued with the infidel. In the West, the audacious Ibn-Merwan plundered at will the rich settlements of Estremadura and Lusitania. Valencia and Murcia, the nurseries of many a serious revolt, exhibited unconcealed signs of disaffection, caused by the imposition of excessive taxes and the uncontrolled rapacity of their governors. In the South, the daring Ibn-Hafsun, the representative of the prejudices and the aspirations of a numerous and growing faction, exercised despotic rule over the greater part of Andalusia. Brigands swarmed on the highways. Travel was impossible, except under the protection of a strong escort. Communication between the great cities of the Peninsula was as difficult as if they had been separated by vast continents or seas. At one time, for eight years, intercourse was entirely suspended between Saragossa and Cordova. In every community an ill-defined but universal presentiment of impending evil prevailed. Society was distracted by the quarrels of theologians, frivolous in their nature, but often serious in their consequences. In the history of Islam, a dispute concerning a religious formula or the authenticity of a tradition had, more than once, led to a bloody proscription, or involved entire nations in war. While the majority of the Christian tributaries acquiesced in the conditions imposed by the Moslem laws, numbers of deluded fanatics, resorting to every species of outrage and blasphemy, courted the tortures and the fame of martyrdom. Much of the country was depopulated. Where the inhabitants remained, agricultural and commercial operations greatly declined, and in some districts were absolutely suspended. The public revenues were diminished to such an extent that even the penuriousness of the Emir, aided by the extortions of his merciless officials, could with difficulty provide for the necessary expenses of the royal household. At the death of Mohammed, scarcely one-fourth of the territorial area over which he claimed sovereign jurisdiction acknowledged the legitimacy of his title or contributed to the maintenance of his power.

The evidences of national decadence are only too perceptible in the disappearance of public spirit and military virtue; in the incessant prosecution of intestine warfare; in the almost unresisted encroachments of the Christian arms; in the habitual treachery of officers entrusted with high commands; in the jealousies of courtiers and the intrigues of fanatics; in the feigned enthusiasm of crusades inaugurated in obedience to the principles of Islam, sometimes crowned with partial success, but often terminating in disgrace and disaster.

The character of Mohammed was principally remarkable for irresolution and parsimony. He surrendered whole provinces and degraded his dignity by humiliating concessions extorted by the threats of insolent chiefs of banditti. Such was his meanness that, in a transaction involving the payment of more than a hundred thousand dinars, he defrauded the treasury officials of a few pieces of copper. He reduced the pay of his soldiers. He condescended to share the salaries of government employees, whom he appointed conditionally upon the division of their earnings. Yet, with these serious faults, he was the patron of science, the friend of the learned, a graceful poet and orator, and one of the most accomplished calligraphists of his time. The lack of effective organization; the secret and implacable hostility that pervaded every branch of the body politic; the boldness and tenacity of the Asturians, aided by the sympathy of an innumerable body of Christian ecclesiastics domiciled in every city and village of the empire; and the unavoidable catastrophes of nature, render it extremely problematical whether, under similar circumstances, a prince possessed of greater ability than Mohammed could have better sustained the declining fortunes of the emirate.

CHAPTER XI
REIGN OF AL-MONDHIR; REIGN OF ABDALLAH
886–912

Parallel between the Policy of the Moorish and Asturian Courts—Alfonso III.—His Conquests—Energy of Al-Mondhir—Siege of Bobastro—Stratagem of Ibn-Hafsun—The Emir is Poisoned—Abdallah ascends the Throne—Conditions of Parties and Sects—Prevalence of Disorder—Insurrection at Elvira—Success of the Arab Faction—Disturbances at Seville—General Disaffection of the Provinces—Ibn-Hafsun defeated at Aguilar—Disastrous and Permanent Effects of the Continuance of Anarchy—Sudden Death of Abdallah—Important Political Changes wrought by a Generation of Civil Warfare.

A striking parallel exists between the successive events that compose respectively the political history of the rival kingdoms of Christian and Moorish Spain. In the circumstances of physical environment, in national traditions, in manners, language, and religious belief, no two races could be more dissimilar. Yet, in many respects, the accounts of the disturbances following the accession of the Kings of the Asturias and the Emirs of Cordova are counterparts of each other. Both monarchies were, in theory, elective. The independent spirit of the Arab and the untamed ferocity of the Goth were equally opposed to the subordination necessarily implied by the adoption of the law of hereditary descent. As the ruler grew more powerful, he naturally became more anxious to transmit to his descendants the authority which had been gained by his valor or confirmed by his prudence. To secure to his family this coveted advantage, he was accustomed to solicit, in his lifetime, the public acknowledgment of his son as heir apparent, who had, not infrequently, been associated with him in the conduct of the administration. A council composed of the principal officers, prelates, and nobles of the realm was convoked, and required to show its devotion to king or emir by swearing allegiance to the prince whom paternal affection, and sometimes distinguished merit, had designated as the future sovereign. This assent, prompted by interest and the certainty of royal favor, was seldom refused, and, strengthened by custom until it became a part of the constitution, was, after a few generations, regarded as a mere ceremonial,—the formal assertion of a right whose legality had been tacitly established by considerations of public policy, if not by ancient prescription. But such was the effect of a regulation in governments which preserved the forms of election but repudiated its untrammelled exercise, that the choice of the monarch, as soon as he ascended the throne, generally found himself embroiled with his less fortunate brethren, each of whom believed that he had been defrauded of his birthright. That the mere consent of the council was not deemed conclusive is proven by the fact that possession of the palace was deemed prima facie evidence of title, a principle recognized equally at Oviedo and Cordova. With insubordination came civil war and the lamentable consequences of internecine conflict. The savage instincts of the Gothic princes caused them to blind their unfortunate rivals and immure them for life in the foul and reeking cells of subterranean dungeons. The vengeance of the Moor, however, was usually satisfied with short imprisonment, and, if the culprit expressed contrition, he was often restored to favor and his crime condoned. The student of ancient Spanish history cannot fail to be deeply impressed with the different methods of dealing with treason in the north and south of the Peninsula, regions arrayed against each other in continual hostility,—exhibiting marked resemblances when they were least to be expected, and, in disposing of offences aimed at the throne and life of the monarch, displaying, on the one hand, an indulgence dictated by a magnanimity that seemed almost suicidal; on the other, a severity characterized by atrocities that could only proceed from the grossest barbarism.