The consciousness of great talents; the uniform success which had attended his operations; the virtual control of the most opulent provinces of the Peninsula; and the boundless, almost servile, devotion of his followers, now prompted Ibn-Hafsun to aspire to the rights as well as the actual possession of absolute power. With this end in view, he sent an embassy, laden with costly presents, to the Abbaside Viceroy of Africa, offering to become the vassal of the Eastern Khalifate in return for the commission of Emir of Spain. The application was forwarded to Bagdad, and Ibn-Hafsun was encouraged to expect the speedy fulfilment of his hopes.
This ominous design had not been conducted so secretly as to escape the knowledge of the court. Abdallah perceived at a glance the imminent peril that menaced his throne. There was little doubt that the consideration acquired by the vassal of the Abbasides would at once invest with dignity and authority the renegade chieftain, whose pretensions grounded upon force were still deficient in the indispensable requisite of legality. The jurisdiction of the emirate was not recognized beyond the actual confines of the capital. The palace was infested with traitors. An active and fanatical sect was distributed throughout the city conveying secret information to the enemy, and impatiently expecting the moment when they might exact retribution at once for the humiliation of conquest and the wrongs of persecution. In his extremity the Emir endeavored, but in vain, to conciliate his foe. Foiled in this attempt, he resolved to risk an appeal to arms. His decision was heard by the Divan with unconcealed dismay, but their remonstrances were unheeded. In the abject nature of Abdallah, degraded by superstition and haunted by the memory of atrocious crimes, an heroic sentiment, born of despair, had at last arisen. When intelligence of his determination to substitute for the pusillanimous policy he had hitherto employed the hazardous experiment of the sword was conveyed to Ibn-Hafsun, his surprise was provoked to the point of incredulity. But when he was told that the advance guard of the hostile troops was in motion, and that the royal pavilion had been pitched in the plain of Secunda to await the arrival of the sovereign, he no longer doubted the truth of a report which seemed to be a certain presage of victory. The insurgent army mustered thirty thousand strong. It was composed of veterans who knew no home but the camp, no pleasure but the excitement of battle, no law but the command of their general. The royal force, on the other hand, numbered scarce fourteen thousand men. One-third of these were the guards of the Emir; the remainder was composed of raw recruits whose courage and fidelity could not be depended upon in the hour of trial.
The two armies met near Aguilar. Whatever hesitation the inexperienced soldiers of the emirate may have previously manifested, none flinched in the presence of the enemy. Their courage was nerved to desperation when they remembered that defeat meant death, for Ibn-Hafsun never gave quarter. The efforts of the combatants were encouraged by the exhortations of the imams and the prelates, who fearlessly exposed their unprotected persons in the thickest of the fight. The rebel lines were broken by the furious charge of Abdallah’s troops. Once in confusion, they could not be rallied, and, dispersed in every direction, they fell by thousands under the weapons of their pursuers. Their leader, having narrowly escaped capture, with difficulty succeeded in reaching his mountain stronghold.
An abundant and acceptable supply of arms, treasure, and munitions of war came into the possession of Abdallah by the capture of Aguilar. A thousand renegade Christians who preferred death to a second apostasy were beheaded. The moral effect of the victory was important and wide-spread. Ecija was taken after a short resistance. Archidona and Jaen voluntarily implored the clemency of the conqueror. The Viceroy of Africa notified the discomfited renegade at Bobastro that his pretensions to the Spanish Emirate, under the auspices of the Khalifate of Bagdad, could no longer be entertained. The friends of order of every faction—the nobles, the merchants, the proprietors of large estates, the artisans, and the peasantry—for a moment regained confidence in a cause which they had recently considered as hopelessly lost.
This flattering prospect was, however, soon clouded by fresh disasters. The reverse sustained by Ibn-Hafsun was temporary, and had not seriously affected either his popularity or power. With little effort he succeeded, in a measure, in re-establishing his authority. The lost cities were retaken through treachery or by force. The royal governors were decapitated, as an intimation to the monarch that his appointees were to be classed as rebels, the servants of a usurper. The Arab party of Granada was beaten in a great battle, and its influence forever destroyed. The reviving fortunes of Ibn-Hafsun had produced a strong reaction in his favor when his renunciation of Islamism—an act of mistaken policy which, without gaining the respect of the Christians, made him an object of aversion to every Mussulman—effected greater injury to his cause than a score of defeats could have accomplished. The last nine years of Abdallah’s life were the least turbulent of his reign. The substantial aid afforded by the Arab nobles, at last convinced of their dependence on the crown, had restored the languishing authority of the emirate.
Radical changes had been produced in the political complexion and social condition of the Peninsula by a generation of civil war. Factions had been practically exterminated. All the great leaders, save one, had been removed by age, disease, or assassination. The motive of the original sedition had long been forgotten. Religion had become the nominal incentive to hostility. The enthusiasm of the clansman aspiring to independence had been supplanted by the avarice of the brigand eager for rapine. The general character of the subjects of the emirate had undergone a complete metamorphosis. They had lost the ferocious and uncompromising spirit of their ancestors. They were no longer oppressed by the tyranny of the monarch, whose helplessness and imbecility everywhere provoked public contempt. The enmity with which the members of opposing parties regarded each other was rather apparent than real. Their military operations were languidly prosecuted. Their encounters were often bloodless. Familiarity with disorder induced many to consider it the natural condition of society. The vitality of the royal power seemed proof against all the resources of treason and violence. Thousands of lives had been sacrificed in futile attempts to overturn a government whose support rested neither upon the valor of its soldiery, the genius of its statesmen, nor the affections of its people.
The sober sense of the masses, chastened by misfortune, eventually caused them to reflect upon the advantages of submission to authority and the restoration of order. Insubordination had brought nothing but distress. The great works of the founders of the dynasty—souvenirs of former prosperity and renown—were everywhere around them. Principles of vital importance to their forefathers were but meaningless names to the present generation. These considerations first affected communities whose commercial interests were seriously involved. A number of the provincial capitals voluntarily returned to their allegiance. Gradually other towns followed their example. Even in the mountain fastnesses the spirit of returning loyalty began to assert itself. Anarchy and exhaustion effected what force was powerless to accomplish, and the close of the administration of one of the worst of Moslem princes was characterized by a degree of tranquillity unknown to those of many of his race eminently distinguished for their genius and their virtues.
During all these internal commotions, the peace existing between the courts of Oviedo and Cordova was never broken by hostilities of a serious character, a circumstance that contributed largely to the preservation of the Moslem empire. Everything seemed to indicate at least a respite from the evils that had so long afflicted the people and harassed the government, when Abdallah suddenly expired, in the sixty-ninth year of his age.
The relation of the monotonous and sanguinary events of this period is valuable, in a philosophical point of view, in determining the real causes of the decadence of the Mohammedan power in Western Europe. The chronicle of the reign of Abdallah, the Emir, is in reality the story of Ibn-Hafsun, the renegade. Yet this enterprising partisan was indebted for his fame far less to his own abilities, conspicuous as they were, than to the disputes and jealousies of his enemies. These effects of tribal prejudice made possible the organization of a troop of banditti that a single squadron of cavalry, properly directed, would have been sufficient to disperse. The spirit of insubordination became contagious; the governors of remote provinces threw off their allegiance; the sources of public revenue were obstructed; repeated disasters shook the precarious loyalty of powerful chieftains, whose barbaric traditions deluded them with the fallacious hope of independence; the fires of religious discord were kindled in every community; and the government, deprived of its subjects, seemed repeatedly on the verge of dissolution. The character of the sovereign was, in a measure, responsible for many of the most serious disasters of his reign. It possessed no qualities that could inspire the respect or elicit the approbation of either friend or foe. Abdallah was a miserable compound of hypocrite and poltroon. His title had been obtained by fratricide. The crime had been attended with circumstances which heightened its atrocity. Popular rumor attributed to him the murder of two of his sons. Without faith, he betrayed in turn both his allies and his enemies. He neglected the appeals of devoted adherents whose fidelity had long been proof against temptation. He suffered himself to be deceived by the representations of rebels whom experience had shown to be wholly devoid of truth and honor. He possessed neither the capacity of the general nor the courage which is an indispensable attribute of the common soldier. His impiety was so universally recognized that it was the favorite theme of satirical poets, and even the imams frequently omitted to mention his name in the khotba, or public prayer. Little wonder was it that, under such a ruler, the Emirate of Cordova should have reached the lowest point in its fortunes to which it was reduced before its final overthrow. The authority of the crown was everywhere disputed. The great cities,—Seville, Cadiz, Toledo, Jaen, Granada, Valencia, Saragossa,—whose power and glory had been the pride of former ages, no longer sent their rich tributes to the capital on the Guadalquivir. The slumbers of the citizens of Cordova were nightly disturbed by the shrieks of peasants dying under the weapons of banditti, and by the lurid glare of burning villages that lighted up the landscape with the brilliancy of noon-day. Traffic disappeared from the highways. The markets were empty and deserted. The prevalent insecurity had suspended the operations of agriculture, and the necessaries of life became luxuries attainable only by the rich. In many localities famine-stricken wretches fed, with ghastly satisfaction, upon the bodies of their friends and neighbors. These deplorable conditions were aggravated by the denunciations and prophecies of the ministers of religion, who, with characteristic audacity, shifted the blame for public misfortune upon those who were in reality its victims, and called down upon the heads of a sinful and pleasure-loving people the long-deferred but inexorable wrath of an avenging God.