The dismemberment of the empire now progressed with appalling rapidity. The chief’s of both factions constantly solicited the aid of the Christians for the destruction of their adversaries. For a time their entreaties were heeded, but with each application the surrender of territory, whose fortresses constituted the security of the frontier provinces of the khalifate, was required. With the increasing distress of the party whose nominal head was Hischem, the demands of the Leonese and Castilian chieftains became more exacting. At length the Count of Castile threatened that, unless all the strongholds taken and fortified by Al-Mansur were delivered to him, he would join the Berbers with the entire force at his command. The cowardice of the government of Cordova impelled it to make this disgraceful concession. A great number of fortified places won by the valor of Al-Mansur’s veterans were evacuated by the Saracen garrisons. Encouraged by the example of Sancho, the petty sovereigns of Leon and Navarre sent similar messages to Cordova. The incompetent Wadhih, who exercised the royal power in the name of the Khalif, terrified by these empty menaces, hastened to purchase temporary immunity for the capital by the sacrifice of the remaining bulwarks of the frontier. It was not long before the Christian princes, without striking a blow or giving any equivalent, recovered the territory which all the courage and obstinacy of their fathers had not been able to retain.
The occupation of Cordova by Suleyman was far from obtaining for him the submission of the remaining cities of the khalifate. The excesses committed by the Berbers, and the employment of the hated infidels of Castile, arrayed almost the entire population against him. The strongholds of the North, through the pusillanimous conduct of the imperial officials, were irretrievably lost. The governors of the eastern and western provinces proclaimed their independence. Thousands of prosperous villages were destroyed; and the plains so recently covered with luxuriant vegetation again assumed the desolate appearance they possessed during the disastrous civil wars of the emirate. So complete was this devastation, that it was said one could travel for many days northward from Cordova and not encounter a single human being.
Upon the arrival of Ali, Suleyman’s successor, at the capital, a thorough search was made for the Khalif Hischem, but without success. The corpse buried by Mohammed was exhumed, but was not identified as that of the unfortunate prince. Diligent inquiry failed to elicit any reliable intelligence concerning the missing monarch. The same uncertainty envelops the end of the last of the Ommeyades that attaches to the fate of the last of the Visigoths. Both were the degenerate heirs of a dynasty of illustrious sovereigns. One lost his crown and his life directly through the oppression he inflicted on his subjects; the other indirectly through tyranny endured from an unnatural relative and an ungrateful minister. Both perished by treason, and each disappeared in the final catastrophe which overwhelmed his kingdom. The Khalif Hischem was never seen after the Berbers sacked the capital. An idle tradition asserted that he escaped the carnage of that dreadful day and found a refuge in Asia. It is more probable, however, that he was killed in the confusion of the assault, and that his body, stripped and unrecognized, was consigned, with those of thousands of his subjects, to an unknown grave. With him ended the prosperity, the affluence, the glory of the line of the Ommeyades. Henceforth, the khalifate, broken into a multitude of independent and often hostile principalities, offered an easy prey to the enterprise of the Christians, whose costly experience had finally taught them the imperative necessity of concerted union.
END OF VOLUME I.
Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected silently.
2. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have been retained as in the original.
3. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the original.