The long and illustrious reign of Alfonso III., worthily named The Great, which occupies so much space in the early annals of the Reconquest, affords a conspicuous example of the vicissitudes and trials that attended the adventurous lives of the princes of the Asturian monarchy. Associated with his father Ordoño for four years preceding his advent to the throne, he was far from being a novice when summoned to assume the grave responsibilities of sovereignty. The four brothers of the King, jealous of the paternal preference, and disputing the legality of a custom that arbitrarily excluded from the succession even those most eligible under the provisions of the ancient Visigothic constitution, united their forces in a formidable attempt to subvert the authority of Alfonso. The enterprise resulted disastrously; the barbarous severity of the laws was demonstrated without the mitigation that might have been expected from the influence of fraternal sympathy, and the unhappy princes were deprived of their eye-sight and imprisoned for life in the castle of Oviedo. Three of them speedily sank under the hardships of confinement; but the fourth, Veremundo, succeeded, by some fortunate circumstance, in escaping, and was eventually raised by his adherents to the government of Astorga. In this strong city, occasionally assisted by the arms of the Moors, he successfully defied the attacks of the King of the Asturias for more than seven years. The address and courage necessarily implied by this determined resistance are in themselves sufficiently remarkable; but the fact that the hero who directed operations which thwarted the designs and repulsed the forces of an entire kingdom for this extended period was totally blind may well awaken surprise and admiration.
The eminent abilities of Alfonso III. were displayed on many a hotly contested field and in many a critical emergency during his long career. His arms were carried farther into the country of the enemy than the bravest of his predecessors had ventured to penetrate. Coimbra, Oporto, Zamora, Toro, Simancas, and numerous other cities of less importance were added to the dominions of the Christian monarchy by the efforts of his valor or the terror of his name. The sound of his trumpets had awakened the affrighted peasantry whose fields occupied the fertile slopes of the Sierra Morena. His banners had been repeatedly seen from the battlements of Merida. His squadrons had menaced the suburbs of the Moslem capital. He enforced with unabated rigor the ruthless policy of extermination inaugurated by the first monarch of his name. The captives taken in his numerous expeditions were, for the most part, distributed among the estates of the ecclesiastical order and the royal demesnes, to be employed in the construction of churches, monasteries, castles, and palaces. With each advance of the line marking the boundary of the two kingdoms to the southward, new fortresses were erected, the most famous of which was that which stood upon the site of modern Burgos, a city whose fortunes have ever been so closely identified with those of the Castilian monarchy. The province of Navarre, heretofore considered as an insignificant principality, whose allegiance to the Asturian Crown was conceded rather by the indifference of its inhabitants than based upon the acknowledgment of any well-defined obligation, was, by the marriage of Alfonso III. to Ximena, daughter of the count, enabled to claim, for the first time in history, the position of an independent kingdom. For thirty-one years Alfonso maintained an incessant contest with the Emirs of Cordova. He saw the dominions of the descendants of those terrified fugitives who had taken shelter in the wilds of the Pyrenees extended far beyond the Douro and the Tagus to the shores of the distant Guadiana. He witnessed the thorough consolidation of the temporal and ecclesiastical powers, a union portending so much to the future renown and dishonor of Spain. The shrine of Santiago had already been enriched by the devotion of the pious and the fears of the wicked; the rude hamlet had begun to assume the appearance of a city; the homely chapel had been replaced by a stately cathedral; and a constant stream of weeping and hysterical pilgrims attested the growth of a spirit of fanaticism whose effects were to be, erelong, conspicuously exhibited in those romantic deeds of daring which abound in the annals of the Reconquest. At the close of his reign, three-fourths of the Peninsula—a territory that, with the exception of a corner of the mountain wilderness, had once paid tribute to the followers of Mohammed—was in the possession of the champions of Christendom or their allies.
The youth of the new Emir, Al-Mondhir, had, like that of his ancestors, been passed amidst military exercises or in warlike enterprises. No prince had yet ascended the throne under more auspicious circumstances, nor, at the same time, better qualified to restore the tarnished lustre of the Moslem name. His discretion and sagacity bore a just proportion to the impulsive courage that distinguished him among a nation of heroes. The energy of his character may be inferred from his response to the Toledans, who, immediately after his accession, sent him the customary tribute, which he at once returned with the following message, “Keep your money for the expenses of war, for, if God so wills, I shall soon attack you.”
The absence of Al-Mondhir, as has been already related, gave the redoubtable rebel Ibn-Hafsun an opportunity to greatly increase his following, and to secure, by threats and delusive promises, many important fortresses in Andalusia. The resolute prince, thoroughly cognizant of the dangerous character of his adversary, did not suffer him to long enjoy the advantages which the domestic misfortune of others rather than his own abilities had enabled him to obtain. Leaving Cordova quietly at the head of a body of veteran troops, he suddenly laid siege to the strong post of Archidona, commanded by an ally of Ibn-Hafsun, and, like him, a renegade. The boldness of this chieftain, who, while defaming the religion he had renounced, declared his willingness to be executed in case of capture, led Al-Mondhir to tempt the cupidity of the citizens by an enormous bribe; the apostate was surrendered, and, in accordance with the terms of his defiance, underwent a death ignominious in the eyes of all Mussulmans,—crucifixion between the bodies of two of the most unclean of animals. Terrified by this example of severity, Archidona opened its gates. The cavalry of the Emir then swept the country of provisions; some towns were plundered; a score of insurgents selected for prominence in their party were executed; and the entire army of Al-Mondhir, flushed with success and animated by the hope of booty and vengeance, invested the formidable stronghold of Bobastro.
While he entertained little fear that his castle could be taken, the cunning Ibn-Hafsun determined to provide if possible against such a contingency, and relieve his followers from the disastrous consequences of a blockade. With every appearance of sincerity, he professed a desire to conclude a permanent peace. Al-Mondhir, with all his experience, was not proof against the humble protestations of regret and assurances of future loyalty proffered by the rebel chieftain. A treaty was drawn up virtually at the dictation of the latter. At his request, a hundred mules, guarded by an escort of a hundred and sixty horsemen, were furnished to convey his family and property to Cordova. His apparent submission having removed all suspicions of his good faith, he escaped without difficulty in the dead of night; and having returned to Bobastro, which the army of the Emir had quitted, he collected a few soldiers, massacred the escort, and by daybreak was once more under shelter of the towers of the fortress. The rage of Al-Mondhir, aroused to the highest pitch by this exhibition of duplicity, impelled him to take a solemn oath that he would never cease his efforts until the perfidious rebel should have paid the extreme penalty of his treason. The blockade was renewed, but with diminished vigor, as the discipline of the troops was not only lax, but they were disheartened at the prospect of a protracted siege, the opinion prevailing among them that Bobastro was impregnable. Aware of the increasing discontent, a conspiracy was formed against Al-Mondhir by his brother Abdallah and the eunuchs of the palace; the court physician was prevailed upon to use a poisoned lancet to bleed his royal patient for some trifling indisposition; and the gallant prince, whose career bade fair to be one of the most illustrious of his dynasty, died in excruciating torture after a reign of a little less than two years. He left no sons, and the criminal design of Abdallah, which had been pushed rapidly to its execution for this very reason, having been accomplished, that prince, informed of the death of Al-Mondhir before it was known to his friends, appeared suddenly in camp, asserted his claim to the throne, and received the reluctant homage of the officers of the army.
The soldiers, who respected the abilities and stood in awe of the ferocious spirit of Ibn-Hafsun, displayed no grief at the death of their sovereign. With every manifestation of joy, they turned their backs upon the rebel stronghold, and, without preserving the semblance of military order, began a straggling march towards their homes. Each village which this armed rabble traversed was the scene of hundreds of desertions, and of the plunder of the already grievously oppressed inhabitants. The disorderly retreat had not escaped the notice of Ibn-Hafsun, and he was already close in the rear of the retiring column when a messenger arrived from the usurper imploring his forbearance, and declaring that he entertained no hostile intentions towards him. The rebel leader had the courtesy to respect this petition; and Abdallah, guarding his brother’s corpse lashed carelessly upon a camel, was permitted to reach Cordova without molestation. So complete was the disorganization of the army, that of a force numbering several thousand men scarcely twoscore troopers remained to escort the new monarch to the gates of the capital.
The crown that had been polluted by treason and fratricide seemed destined now to become the instrument of universal misfortune. The political condition of the Peninsula was already extremely complicated. Society was everywhere threatened with dissolution. The Arabs, proud of their lineage, and appropriating to their race the credit of conquests largely achieved by their allies and proselytes, constituted an aristocracy whose pretensions were both unwarrantable and offensive. Far from recognizing the new converts to Islam as brothers,—as recommended by the Koran,—they treated them as inferiors, and frequently loaded them with indignities which they would have hesitated to inflict upon their own slaves. The lapse of generations, the most eminent services, the greatest talents, the performance of acts of valor that evoked the plaudits of their enemies, could not, in the eyes of these haughty descendants of idolaters and banditti, atone for the reproach of ancient infidelity. But it was only in their antagonism to recent converts and their children that the Arabs were united. Between the Syrian and the Bedouin of the Hedjaz still existed an irreconcilable enmity. The hereditary feud of Maadite and Yemenite preserved all its original bitterness and intensity, although, on account of the incessant clashing of other interests, its manifestations were not so pronounced as they had been in the earlier years of the emirate. The confiscation of the estates of Gothic fugitives and the fortunes of the Conquest had given the Arabs an opportunity to acquire extensive estates and to amass immense riches. The deeply-rooted antipathy of the Bedouin to confinement had caused the aristocracy of the Peninsula to establish itself in the vicinity of large cities, such as Jaen, Cordova, Seville, and Malaga, where, surrounded by an army of retainers and slaves, they enjoyed the pleasures and independence of a pastoral life, for which they had inherited a predilection from their ancestors, the nobles of Central and Western Arabia.
But the several factions into which the Arabs were divided bore no comparison in numbers, power, or opulence to those composing the remainder of the population. It was but a small proportion of the Christians who, in consequence of the invasion of Tarik, had sought the unfettered exercise of political and religious liberty amidst the wilds of the Asturias. The sacred traditions of ancestry, the ties of birth, the associations of childhood, the fear of penury, the hope of wealth and distinction, retained the large majority in their homes, where many continued to enjoy the consideration derived from exalted rank and great possessions. Some paid gladly the reasonable tribute that promised a greater degree of security than they had ever known under the kings and chieftains of Gothic lineage. These were called Ahl-al-Dhimmah, The Tributaries. The members of another class, the Ajem, boldly refused to recognize the authority of the conqueror, and maintained a nominal independence in the mountains where they had their haunts, but, destitute of effective organization, they scarcely rose to the dignity of banditti. The alluring inducements of pecuniary interest and political advantage had formed another caste or faction, more numerous and more important in its influence on the fortunes of the Peninsula than all the others combined,—the Muwallads, a comprehensive term denoting persons whose derivation, while nominally Arab, was yet tainted with some foreign impurity, and which, corrupted into mulatto, has been incorporated into many of the languages of Europe. This designation was popularly applied to the descendants of renegades or apostates, called Mosalimah, an appellation corresponding to the Moriscoes, or New Christians, converted after the capture of Granada by the zealous Ximenes and his coadjutors through the potent arguments of the rack and fagot. Still another caste was the Muraddin, former converts, who, having renounced the faith of Islam, had rendered themselves amenable to death, the penalty prescribed by Mohammed for the unpardonable crime of apostasy. These were outlaws and highwaymen, who, in defiance of the feeble police maintained by the government, openly levied contributions upon travellers within sight of the minarets of Cordova. Add to these disorganizing elements of society the half-savage Berbers,—for the most part idolaters in religion and assassins in war,—and the difficulties that confronted the ablest princes of the Ommeyades may well be conceived. The Jews, whose mercantile pursuits made them on all occasions advocates for peace and frequently useful mediators, were robbed and oppressed in turn by every faction into whose hands they were unfortunate enough to fall. No region in the world of equal area contained such a mixed and turbulent population as the Spanish Peninsula before the Reconquest. The emirs, actuated by a principle familiar to all despotic sovereigns threatened with a curtailment of their power, bestowed their favor in turn upon the Arabs and the Muwallads, according as one or the other seemed about to obtain a pre-eminence dangerous to the safety of the state. But this policy reacted in an unexpected manner, and aggravated the evils it was intended to obviate. The victorious party never failed to abuse its advantage with brutal severity. The faction for the time being under the frown of the Court, lost all respect for, and renounced its allegiance to, a government that refused it the protection of the laws. The result was a bitter conflict in which Arab and Muwallad were arrayed against the Emir and against each other at the same time. The death of Al-Mondhir was the signal for increased disorder, which the feeble and hypocritical Abdallah was incompetent to suppress. The Arab nobles had long hoped to revive, in another land, that period of unrestricted license whose traditions survived in the exciting poems of the robbers and shepherds of the Desert. The famous Ibn-Hafsun, whose name was the terror of every hamlet, and who, as the head of the rebels of Bobastro and the natural ally of every party of malcontents, was more powerful than the Emir himself, now began to entertain hopes of being actually invested with the royal dignity which he in substance already enjoyed.
The situation of Abdallah was perilous in the extreme. The loyalty for the House of Ommeyah, which had been for generations the marked characteristic of the Arab of Syrian descent and the Koreishite alike, was greatly impaired. The treasury was empty. The taxes due from the walis were, for the most part, withheld. The tribute of the Christians, instigated by the Muwallads whom they considered their champions, was, except in Cordova and its immediate environs, suspended. The royal convoys were intercepted and plundered on the highways. The fidelity of the populace of the capital, suspected of secretly holding communication with the enemy, was distrusted. A spirit of bravado had even prompted Ibn-Hafsun to pass several days within its gates, which he had entered unchallenged in the disguise of a beggar. The prejudices of Abdallah inclined him to an alliance with the renegades. His early years had been passed in intimate friendship with the officers of the guard, who had since become distinguished leaders of that party. The achievements of Ibn-Hafsun had rather awakened his admiration than provoked his resentment. Conscious of his helplessness, and desirous of conciliating the most powerful chief of the opposition, he went so far as to tender him the government of Regio, conditional upon his return to his allegiance. The crafty rebel, to whom an oath was an unmeaning ceremony and who desired a respite to enable him to reorganize his army, acquiesced without hesitation, and even consented to send his son and several of his officers as hostages to the court of the Emir. The latter treated these pledges of the uncertain fidelity of a perfidious vassal with all the distinction usually reserved for the emissaries of royalty. They were magnificently entertained, lodged in palaces, and presented with costly gifts. Unrestrained of their liberty, they had no trouble in escaping when, a few months later, they received a secret message to repair to Bobastro. All security for his loyal behavior being lost by their departure, Ibn-Hafsun resumed his depredations with greater audacity than ever. His aid was soon afterwards solicited by the renegades of a district which had hitherto rather avoided than courted his alliance,—the city and province of Elvira.
In the general distribution of lands made under the direction of the emirs who acknowledged the Khalif of Damascus, the beautiful plain subsequently known as the Vega of Granada was assigned to the natives of Syria. With true Bedouin reserve and love of freedom, the adventurers who had won this earthly paradise by their valor disposed their habitations as far from the crowded haunts of men as the extent and situation of their estates would permit. The increase of their flocks, and the produce of the soil tilled by multitudes of industrious slaves, soon raised their descendants to the height of opulence. In the course of events, through confiscations for treason, the casualties of war, and the effects of disease, many Arab families became extinct, and their real property, by purchase or extortion, became vested in a comparatively small number of great proprietors, whose possessions embraced all the most valuable estates in the province. These lords formed a caste that, for arrogance and exclusiveness, had no equal in the Peninsula. The national pride of the Syrian noble was immensely flattered by the sovereign pre-eminence of his countrymen, the princes of the House of Ommeyah. In his inordinate vanity he fancied that the future of that dynasty depended on his individual exertions, as he habituated himself to believe that its establishment was solely due to the genius and efforts of his ancestors. And yet with all his professed attachment to the crown, his loyalty had been more than once justly suspected. There, as elsewhere, the interests of the court had been repeatedly sacrificed to gratify the malice of faction,—for the inappeasable feud between Yemenite and Maadite was nowhere maintained with greater virulence than in the province of Elvira. In his intercourse with his equals the Arab of the Vega—like all his brethren exposed for a time to the refinements of civilization—was a model of chivalrous politeness and graceful courtesy. But his demeanor was far different when his affairs demanded any association with the inhabitants of the city, who, in his eyes, labored under the double reproach of being traders and renegades. No opportunity was lost to humiliate these peaceful citizens; although in practice devout Moslems, they were constantly taunted with their apostasy; and for their denunciation the inexhaustible vocabulary of the Arab was ransacked for opprobrious epithets, one of which, “filii canum,” has descended to our time as the very epitome of insult.