In the year 889, a band of twenty Moorish pirates were driven by a tempest into the Gulf of Grimaud, which washes the shores of Lower Provence. Their predatory habits tempted them to explore the adjacent country; a village was surprised and plundered; and further investigation convinced them of the advantages which chance had thrown in their way for the foundation of a permanent colony. It was indeed an ideal spot for a robber stronghold. The commerce of the Northern Mediterranean was within easy reach. The harbor was retired and capacious. Lofty mountains covered with dense forests surrounded it. From their summits could be discerned the highly-cultivated plains of France, for generations free from the inroads of the marauder, whose inhabitants, ruled by a succession of incapable princes, were wholly destitute of the martial spirit which supplies the neglect of royal protection in a hardy peasantry, and who had been long unaccustomed to the use of arms. Near at hand were the Alps, through whose unguarded passes access was obtainable to the smiling valleys and rich cities of Italy, a country which has been the goal of every military adventurer of Western Europe in both ancient and modern times.
The Moslem freebooters lost no time in apprising their friends and comrades of their discovery. Recruits from Spain, Sicily, and Africa daily swelled their ranks. It was not long before a score of castles—each the seat of a marauding chieftain—crowned the heights overlooking the Gulf of Grimaud and the Forest of Fraxinet. With profound sagacity, these enterprising bandits sold their support to the feudal barons, whose quarrels perpetually vexed the petty states of Provence, always choosing the weakest for their allies. Thus they held the balance of power, and, enriched by the plunder of civil war, acquired each year a larger measure of influence and importance. Their relentless cruelty gave them a weight out of all proportion to their numbers or their valor. Their excesses were the terror of the peasantry. By the end of the ninth century, they had crossed the Alps, threatened Turin, destroyed many monasteries, and laid waste the plains of Montferrat and Piedmont. They established themselves on the Po. In 935 they had advanced to the borders of Liguria. Their depredations extended as far as the city of Genoa. The passes of Mount Cenis and Mount St. Bernard were in their hands. From their strongholds in the Alps they stopped all traffic and levied contributions on every traveller. They carried their arms into Switzerland, and penetrated to the shores of Lake Constance. They burned churches and abbeys under the walls of Marseilles. The city of Nice still bears, in the name of one of its quarters, a souvenir of Saracen occupation.
In France, by reason of its proximity to their colony and the greater facilities it offered to their movements, their incursions were more frequent and disastrous. Much of the level country was depopulated. In the strongest cities alone was security to be found. Almost the entire territory of Provence, Languedoc, and Dauphiné was at one time subject to the visitations of this awful scourge. So strongly had these daring banditti intrenched themselves in the mountains of Southwestern Europe, that the princes in whose dominions they were found were unable to dislodge them. It is hinted by Liutprand that the embassy of John de Gorza had for its principal object the cessation of their ravages, through the intervention of the Khalif, a statement by no means improbable.
Be this as it may, it was not long after that event that the power of the Moslem colonists began to decline. For a time the influx of recruits, the appropriation of women, and the institution of polygamous households threatened a superiority in numbers as well as in arms, and a permanency of occupation, conditions whose danger had been exemplified by the Arab conquests in the South. These fears, however, proved without foundation. The Christians gradually recovered their ground. Castle after castle fell before their assaults. Dependent upon their own efforts, the Moslem pirates could not sustain the combined attack made upon them from every side, and, before the death of Abd-al-Rahman, they had lost their influence as a disturbing force in those countries which they had for three-quarters of a century made the scene of their depredations.
The operations of these chieftains were never divested of the character of brigandage. Except in time of common danger, they acted independently of each other. The permanent success which is derived from a union of forces and concerted political action never attended their arms. Yet, without organization and deprived of the support of any foreign government, they maintained their footing in a hostile territory for nearly a hundred years. Their only resources were the plunder they obtained from their neighbors. Their only recruits were adventurers like themselves, attracted by the hope of booty. Their harems were filled by their forays, and their race propagated at the expense of the enemy. No chronicle, Christian or Arab, explicitly states that they were even countenanced, still less assisted, by the Khalifate of Cordova. Yet no opportunity so favorable to the extension of the Faith and the conquest of Europe was ever offered to the Spanish Moslems. The strategic importance of these piratical strongholds was far greater than that of the exposed settlements of Septimania. They were easily accessible by sea. With trifling labor they might have been rendered impregnable. They controlled the passes of the Alps. They menaced the great cities of Marseilles, Arles, and Narbonne. As a point of concentration for an invading army their value was indisputable. Difficult of approach, they commanded the rich plains of Provence and Languedoc, of Piedmont and Lombardy. The facility with which their marauding and undisciplined garrisons overran the adjacent provinces as far as Genoa and Grenoble is suggestive of the results which might have been accomplished by the systematic operations of a great military power like that of Abd-al-Rahman III., supported by the resources of the most opulent and warlike nation of the age.
The domestic policy of Abd-al-Rahman gave indications of the same genius that directed his military campaigns and diplomatic negotiations. The exact administration of justice, the vigilance of a numerous and well-appointed police, the supervision of an incorruptible magistracy, guaranteed to every class of society the full enjoyment of the rights of person and property. The prevalence of order and the suppression of crime were no less evident in regions far remote from the seat of government than in the immediate precincts of the capital.
The love of pomp and the prodigal display of luxury kept even pace with the increasing wealth and multiplied resources of the empire. The temples were enriched with the spoils and decorated with the trophies of the churches and monasteries of the infidel. The Great Mosque of the capital was enlarged, its court enclosed with a graceful arcade and cooled by delicious fountains. The palaces and gardens of Cordova surpassed in extent and equalled in magnificence the famous ones of Bagdad and Damascus. In the charming and luxurious retreat of Medina-al-Zahrâ, the Khalif transacted the daily routine of business; received foreign ambassadors; heard and decided contests for literary precedence; determined questions of civil and ecclesiastical law. Entertaining, not without reason, a profound distrust of the Arab element, which composed the most intelligent portion of his subjects, he committed the principal offices of government and entrusted the care of his person to the Mamlouks, or Slaves, a class of servile origin, whose numbers—through royal favor, the possession of marked capacity for affairs, and the habit of implicit obedience—soon rose to extraordinary power and influence in the state. This term was applied at first to captives taken in war by the Arabs themselves, or sold to them by the barbarian nations of Germany. But by degrees the name acquired a more extensive significance, and came to include all persons of foreign birth or base extraction employed in the civil and military service of the khalifate. Almost every nation and tribe from the shores of the Caspian to the western extremities of Lusitania were represented in this important class, the alien birth and dependent character of whose constituents divested them of sympathy with the other subjects of the empire, and assured their unwavering devotion to the interests of their master. From the earliest days of the emirate, an enormous traffic had been carried on in slaves with Christian countries, principally with France and Italy. Its profits, originally monopolized by Jews, were, in time, shared by Christian ecclesiastics; and it has been established by incontrovertible evidence that at least one pope did not disdain to replenish the coffers of the Church by an expedient so prejudicial to the interests of religion and humanity. The monasteries of the South of France were largely devoted to the manufacture of eunuchs; those on the Meuse were also especially celebrated on this account, the unfortunate subjects for mutilation being procured by the monks through the purchase of children from the peasantry. The Slave caste, while it included a considerable proportion of eunuchs, was by no means, however, limited to individuals of that unfortunate class.
Although condemned by adverse fortune to a subordinate and frequently to a humiliating position in the scale of society, the inferiority of the Slave, in this respect, was more than compensated by the authority he exercised, by the wealth he was enabled to accumulate, and by the consideration he enjoyed as the chosen agent of the Khalif in posts of responsibility and confidence. The highest employments were entrusted to these strangers, to the prejudice of the ancient aristocracy whose lineage could be traced to the Pagan guardians of the Kaaba and the Companions of the Prophet. The royal body-guard was entirely composed of Slaves. Introduced into the country at an age when youth is most susceptible to outward impressions, they imbibed, through intimate association, through the influence of example, through religious instruction, and through considerations of personal interest, the habits, the prejudices, and the faith of the Moslems. Some amassed large fortunes in trade. Others rose to important commands in the army. Many maintained establishments which surpassed those of the nobility in pomp and extravagance, and themselves owned multitudes of slaves. Not a few were noted for their scholarly attainments; possessed extensive libraries; participated with credit in the public debates which amused the leisure of the court; and acquired no inconsiderable reputation in the pursuits of literature.
This epoch of Moorish dominion, agitated by foreign war and intestine disturbance, was likewise oppressed by the calamities of nature and the grievous machinations of domestic treason. In the year 915, the Peninsula was visited by a famine of unparalleled severity. A long-continued drought, which defied the skill of the hydraulic engineers and the resources of an irrigating system that was the admiration of Europe, wasted the land. A pestilence followed, as usual, in the wake of the famine. Deprived of all means of subsistence and consumed by disease, the unhappy peasantry perished by thousands. The streets and highways were obstructed with the dying and the dead. The mosques were crowded day and night with suppliants, who implored the pity of a God who seemed to have turned His face in anger from His children. Such was the mortality that the survivors were unable to afford to the deceased the rites of burial. Every effort was exerted by the government to alleviate the public misery, but the distress was so general that the liberality of the Khalif was unable to produce any great improvement in the lamentable condition of his subjects, whose violent measures to obtain the necessaries of life not infrequently required the intervention of military force. The measure of national misfortune was filled by the ruin wrought by a terrible hurricane that swept the coasts of Africa and Andalusia, and by a conflagration that destroyed the larger portion of the capital.
Abd-al-Rahman had two sons, named respectively Al-Hakem and Abdallah. Of these, the first was the heir apparent, who, though greatly esteemed and respected for his noble character and princely virtues, was still generally considered as inferior to his brother in literary ability as well as in those showy qualities and accomplishments which dazzle the eyes of the populace. In an evil hour, the ambitious Abdallah, incited by his friend the theologian Ibn-Abd-al-Barr, was induced to agree to the assassination of Al-Hakem, and a plot was hatched with that end in view. Unhappily for their success, a spy had introduced himself into the councils of the conspirators, and they were secretly arrested. Some were impaled. Ibn-Abd-al-Barr anticipated the executioner by suicide; and Abdallah, in spite of the magnanimous intercession of the injured Al-Hakem, was strangled in prison. The happiness of the Khalif was deeply and permanently affected by a deed in which paternal affection was sacrificed to a sense of public duty; and to the day of his death the memory of the untimely fate of his son constantly haunted his thoughts and imparted to his character a melancholy which no diversion could charm away, and no triumph, however glorious, could entirely efface.