Such was the career and such the end of an adventurer whose influence and prestige often rose superior to those of royalty itself; who, by a perverted sentiment of enthusiasm, has passed into history as the exemplar of chivalry and the pattern of every martial excellence; who, though the sacrilegious despoiler of cathedrals and monasteries, is yet revered by the Church as one of her most devoted champions, whose brutality is applauded as zeal, whose perfidy is held up to public admiration as the highest development of worldly wisdom, and who to-day enjoys in the minds of his vainglorious countrymen a consideration not inferior to that accorded to the most venerated saint in the Roman Catholic calendar. Ecclesiastical fictions and popular ignorance prolonged the influence of the Cid far beyond the term of his natural life. The absurd legend which recounted the rout of Moorish armies at the sight of his corpse lashed to the saddle and borne at the head of crusading squadrons on many occasions, in subsequent times, inspired the Castilian chivalry with fresh devotion to their cause. The fables attributed to his charger Babieca and his sword Tizona—which, in imitation of Arabic custom, had each its history—were related with awe in every peasant’s hut on the plain and in the sierra. A sacred character attached to his remains. They worked innumerable miracles. They confounded the designs of unbelievers. Great virtue invested fragments of his coffin and of his garments. They were powerful talismans against danger in battle. They foiled the plots of conspirators. And yet there were few pious persons in the most superstitious age who did not possess far better claims to the attributes of a saint. The Cid was for the greater part of his life a rebel. He defied and oppressed his king. He served the Mohammedans, and, as their ally, invaded the Christian kingdom of France. Even in the poems intended to glorify his exploits he is represented as ridiculing the Pope. He burned churches and robbed the clergy. His perfidy became proverbial. He betrayed everybody. The barbarities he committed without compunction appalled even his own followers, long accustomed to the remorseless butchery of the helpless and the old. His cruelty was incredible. Of the virtues of patriotism, mercy, forgiveness, he knew nothing. Even his orthodoxy was justly liable to criticism. He was more indulgent to the infidel than, in the eyes of the zealots, became a true believer. He maintained a harem. Moslems formed a large proportion of his command. It was even suspected that he was not buried with the rites of the Church. In 1541, when his tomb was opened, his body was found wrapped in a Moorish mantle embroidered with arabesques and Arabic inscriptions. Nevertheless, the universal reverence in which he was held by the Spanish people, clergy and laity alike, induced Philip II., the most austere of royal bigots, to demand his canonization at the hands of the Pope, a ceremony which was only prevented by political complications necessitating the sudden recall of the Spanish ambassador from Rome.

The occupation of Valencia was the last achievement in the life of Yusuf. With the exception of the city of Toledo, and the principality of Saragossa soon to succumb to the arms of his son, the entire realm of Moorish Spain was subject to his authority. This great conquest had been accomplished in less than three years. His empire was equal in magnitude to those of the Ommeyades and Abbasides combined. The entire region of Northern Africa, from Tunis to the Atlantic, obeyed his edicts. His dominions embraced an area more than ten times that of the Western Khalifate during the era of its greatest prosperity. Even the early princes of Islam, upon whom had descended the mantle of the Prophet, had not claimed such a vast jurisdiction or wielded such despotic authority. Every Friday his name was repeated, for the homage and the prayers of the devout, from the pulpits of three hundred thousand mosques. The provinces of Al-Maghreb, as well as those of Spain, had been seriously affected by wars and revolutions; their cities had been repeatedly plundered; their agricultural population had been greatly reduced by enslavement and starvation. Yet such was the wealth of the empire of Yusuf that, notwithstanding the expenditures of a magnificent court and an imperfectly regulated system of taxation, he was enabled to leave to his successor a treasure of seven and a half million pounds’ weight of silver and a hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds’ weight of gold. No less than thirteen princes, who had inherited or usurped the titles of sovereignty, acknowledged him as their lord. Under none of the khalifs of any dynasty had the burdens of the people seemed so light. The necessaries of life were cheaper than they had been within the memory of man. Bread was sold at a nominal price, and for a trifle an armful of the choicest vegetables and fruits could be purchased. The large majority of his subjects paid no taxes. The ordinary expenses of the government were defrayed by the tribute of Christians and Jews; the extraordinary demands were readily met by the spoils of war. Universal demoralization had, however, rendered a lasting reform impracticable among the antagonistic states of the Peninsula accustomed for generations to the prevalence of military excesses and anarchy. The hopes of public happiness and of future security, which at times were entertained by the people, were in the highest degree illusory. Theological influence, fatal to every government, soon overturned the gigantic but unstable fabric of Yusuf. With him and his successors the power of the faquis was paramount. They dictated every measure, disposed of every office, shared in every contribution. Their rapacity and tyranny increased with their opportunities. Even without foreign interference, the African monarchy must within a few years have fallen to pieces. The deterioration of the Berber soldiery was so rapid and complete after its exposure to the temptations and luxury of Andalusia that Ali was compelled to enlist, for his own security, recruits from the infidel populations of Europe. Even the Greeks of Constantinople, the most superstitious of Christians, the most perfidious of men, were to be found in the armies of the natural enemy of the Church and the reformer of the Mohammedan religion. The government officials were selected by the women of the harem, who sold lucrative employments to the highest bidder or shared the profits of extortion, while the monarch prayed and fasted or listened to the exhortations of the clergy. The Almoravide empire fell with the same rapidity that was so conspicuous in its foundation. Not many years were to elapse before its African domain was to be usurped by a race of savage fanatics, and the kingdoms of Spain, with one exception, be permanently subjected to the sceptre of the dreaded and execrated Christian.

The years of Yusuf, prolonged far beyond the ordinary term of human existence, included a full century, three ordinary generations of man. His active life, his abstemious habits, his freedom from those vices which waste the body and enfeeble the mind, enabled him to retain to the last the enjoyment of all his faculties. Although pitiless in the treatment of his enemies, it is related of him that during his entire reign, through motives of mistaken humanity, he never signed the death-sentence of a single criminal. Small indulgence was shown to the two tributary sects which, under the law of Islam, were permitted the exercise of their worship. From both, the contributions established by the successors of Mohammed were rigorously exacted. The Christians were prohibited from making proselytes. All their churches of recent erection were destroyed. A tradition of obscure origin, long current in the Peninsula, was made the excuse for a new and ingenious tax upon the Jews. It was said that the Hebrews had promised Mohammed that if the Messiah did not come before the year 500 of the Hegira their nation would become Mussulman. The time had not yet expired, but Yusuf imposed upon the Jews of his dominions the payment of an immense sum, by which they and their descendants were released from an act of apostasy which they had never contemplated, based upon a tradition probably invented by some idle and mendacious theologian.

The phenomenal rise of the Almoravide empire, its marvellous opulence and apparent stability, the suddenness of its collapse, demonstrate the imperfect cohesion of the ill-balanced and misdirected elements of Moslem society. The Arab and the Berber character, never voluntarily amenable to the salutary restrictions of law and civilization, were now wedded to that civil disorder and habitual freedom from control whose indulgence offered a not imperfect resemblance to the conditions of the predatory and independent life of the Desert. The career of Yusuf was largely modelled after that of Mohammed. The reforms he instituted were productive of temporary peace and of a delusive prosperity, but the Spanish Moslems had become too degraded to appreciate the blessings of tranquillity and order; and their princes, while fully alive to the impending peril of Christian supremacy, unwisely permitted their private feuds and personal prejudices to contribute directly to the subversion of both their authority and their religion.

The sceptre of Yusuf descended to his son Ali, a young man of twenty-three years, whose martial aspirations were constantly subordinated to his religious duties and to his predilection for the society of the clergy. The seat of government, as in the preceding reign, remained at Morocco. The capitals of the various Spanish states and provinces were held either by devoted vassals of the crown or by military governors of established reputation and unquestionable loyalty. Ali was scarcely seated upon the throne before the citizens of Saragossa, weary of the tyranny of the Beni-Hud, solicited his protection; and that city, the key of the valley of the Ebro and the last of the great capitals of Moorish Spain to surrender its independence, was incorporated, without bloodshed, into the colossal Almoravide empire.

The possession of the territory once occupied by the khalifate did not satisfy the restless spirit of Ali, whose policy aspired to so vast and impracticable a scheme as the total annihilation of the Christian power. His ambition was seconded, and indeed largely prompted, by his zeal, which impelled him to the prosecution of incessant hostilities against the enemies of Islam. The occupation of Saragossa by Temim, the son of Yusuf and the governor of Valencia, was followed by an invasion of the dominions of Alfonso VI. and the siege of Ucles. A Castilian army sent to relieve that fortress encountered the Moslems a short distance from its walls. A bloody battle was fought; and the Christians, who far outnumbered their adversaries, underwent a crushing defeat. Sancho, the favorite son of the King by his Moorish wife or concubine, Zayda,—who was the daughter of Motamid, formerly Prince of Seville,—was killed in the action, and the grief of Alfonso was so intense that he only survived his bereavement a few months. To his genius as a soldier and a ruler has been justly attributed a large share of the greatness of the Castilian monarchy. He traversed the territory of his Moslem enemies from one extremity of the Peninsula to the other. In the course of his long and eventful reign he won thirty-nine battles. Great in all the popular qualities of the time, his deeds made a deep and lasting impression on the national character of Spain.

The dissensions which followed the death of their sovereign seriously threatened the integrity of the kingdom. The activity of Temim carried dismay along the entire Christian frontier. Ocaña, Aurelia, Cuenca were again subjected to Moslem authority. The policy of Al-Mansur, which for a quarter of a century, without intermission, had maintained the Holy War, was renewed. Ali reinforced his brother with an army of a hundred thousand Africans, which, after desolating a large part of Castile, formed the siege of Toledo. Unable to make any impression upon that fortress, the invaders stormed and burned Talavera, Guadalajara, Madrid, and many other less important cities. Ibn-Abi-Bekr invaded Portugal and took Santarem and Lisbon. The remoteness of his capital, the restless and impulsive character of his subjects, the danger of sudden revolution, soon necessitated the return of Ali, whose enterprise could not be dignified by the name of a campaign, and was, in fact, nothing more than a gigantic foray. The number of Christian captives who followed in the train of his army exceeded any that had passed the strait since the invasion of Musa. Year after year the lieutenants of the Sultan carried their ravages into the enemy’s country. No quarter was given or expected in these expeditions. All prisoners not available as slaves were inhumanly butchered, and the women and children exhibited for sale in the markets of Al-Maghrab, Egypt, and Syria.

The loss of Alfonso VI. of Castile was compensated by the rise of another Alfonso, King of Aragon, surnamed from his fighting proclivities El Batallador. Under the guidance of his genius, the Christians began again to successfully arrest the progress of Moslem conquest. The line of fortresses along the frontier gradually fell into their hands. The great cities of Lerida and Saragossa were taken. In many fiercely contested engagements, the furious assaults of the Moslems were repulsed by the cool and determined courage of their adversaries. On the bloody field of Cutanda, in an effectual attempt to save the city of Calatayud, the Emir of Valencia left twenty thousand of his bravest soldiers. The tide once turned, the misfortunes of the Moslems followed each other in quick succession. The strongholds of the North were absorbed by the increasing power of the kingdom of Aragon. Portugal and much of the valley of the Douro, which had submitted to Yusuf, were again incorporated into the states of Castile. The decadent condition of his empire in the Peninsula provoked another raid from Ali, at the head of a great African army, with even less decisive results than had attended the former one. The incapacity of the sovereign, in his far-distant capital, to protect his subjects from the oppression of their governors, as well as to defend his frontiers from the encroachments of the enemy, became daily more apparent. The influence of the theologians, as might have been anticipated from the peculiar disposition of Ali, was paramount. The faquis and kadis were the true source of power, the dispensers of favor, the pitiless instruments of oppression and vengeance. They stood at the ear of every provincial magistrate and military commander,—officials whose ignorance exaggerated the knowledge of their unprincipled advisers,—and reaped the profits of spoliation and cruelty, while their dupes bore the odium of their flagrant and shameless injustice. Their intolerance arrayed them against all learning, even to the point of decrying the most accomplished scholars of their own, the Malikite, sect. No philosopher dared to openly entertain an heretical opinion. Poets, formerly accustomed to affluence, wandered about clothed in rags, and were constantly on the verge of starvation. The clerical and judicial harpies who controlled the administration secured the employment of Jews as farmers of the revenue, and divided with these inexorable collectors the fruits of their rapacity and extortion. In consequence of their rare opportunities, they soon became the richest class in Andalusia. Ibn-Hamden, the Kadi of Cordova, surpassed all of his brethren in wealth, his fortune being estimated at several million pieces of gold. Encouraged by their example and success, the Berber officers and soldiers robbed and persecuted the people, already driven to despair by the exactions of corrupt functionaries acting under the perverted authority of the law. They seized their property. They intruded upon their privacy in the unrestrained indulgence of lust and rapine. The wives and daughters of the most respected citizens could not appear in the streets without danger of insult and violation. In consequence of these abuses, the army became thoroughly demoralized, the soldiers refused to face an enemy, and it became necessary to enlist bands of mercenaries, gathered at random among the ports of the Mediterranean, to garrison the principal cities. No attention was paid to the remonstrances of the indignant and suffering victims. At length the revolutionary spirit of Cordova again asserted itself. The inhabitants rose, the Berbers were hemmed in and massacred, and not one of the obnoxious race who dared to face the fury of the mob survived. The appearance of Ali failed to awe the rebels, but the commencement of a siege soon brought them to terms. Aware of the provocations they had endured, the Sultan treated his seditious subjects with unusual leniency, requiring only the pecuniary reimbursement of such of their victims as had escaped with their lives and a liberal indemnity to the families of the dead. It was while at Cordova that Ali received the first intelligence of an insurrection in Africa, whose popularity and progress were of evil augury for the permanence of the already tottering Almoravide power.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE EMPIRE OF THE ALMOHADES
1121–1212

Rise of Abu-Abdallah, the Mahdi—His Character and Talents—He rebels against Ali—His Eventful Career—Abd-al-Mumen succeeds Him—Decline of the Almoravide Power in Spain—Raid of Alfonso of Aragon—Rout of Fraga—Death of Alfonso—Indecisive Character of the Campaigns in the War of the Reconquest—Progress of Abd-al-Mumen in Africa—Victories of the Almohades—Natural Hostility of Moor and Berber—Anarchy in the Peninsula—It is invaded by the Africans—Establishment of the Almohade Empire in Andalusia—Almeria taken by the Christians—Its Recapture by the Berbers—Death of Abd-al-Mumen—His Genius and Greatness—Accession of Yusuf—His Public Works—He organizes a Great Expedition—He dies and is succeeded by Yakub—The Holy War proclaimed—Battle of Alarcos—Effects of African Supremacy—Death of Yakub—The Giralda—Mohammed—He attempts the Subjugation of the Christians—Despair of the Latter—Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa—Utter Rout of the Almohade Army.