The correctness of these observations may be established by recurring to the consequences of the battle of Fraga. The rout of the Christians and the death of their king would certainly seem to have demanded a vigorous prosecution of hostilities by the victors before the popular demoralization resulting from such a catastrophe subsided. But nothing of the kind took place. The few survivors of the defeat which had wrecked the hopes of a nation spread dismay through the realms of the Christians. In Aragon, part of whose territory had recently been ceded by a degenerate prince to his hereditary enemies, and none of which was in sympathy with the usurpation of their detested masters, the people expected, with eager but fallacious hopes, the appearance of the deliverer. The merchants lounged idly in their shops. The peasantry, with sullen patience, submitted to the extortions of the Jewish farmers of the revenue. Saragossa was still, in all but name and government, a Moslem city. The muezzin still announced from her minarets the hour of prayer. The imam still read the Koran from the pulpits of her mosques. Her occupation by the Aragonese had only served to intensify the hatred entertained by her citizens against those who had profited by their betrayal. The noble recalled with mingled sorrow and exultation the military fame and intellectual pursuits of the royal House of Ibn-Hud; the husbandman viewed with unconcealed resentment the encroachments of the Church and the Crown upon his small but valuable inheritance. The valley of the Ebro still possessed many fortresses defended by natural impediments and Moslem valor. All these considerations invited the intervention of the victors, but the Moorish commander, satisfied with the barren laurels acquired at Fraga, neglected an opportunity which might have restored to the Almoravide Sultan one of the most important provinces of his empire. For several years the frontier was wasted by implacable partisan warfare; the Moslems carried into slavery the populations of entire communities; the Christians, harassed by the enemy and encumbered with their prisoners, frequently put these defenceless victims of their hostility to the sword; in the heat of battle quarter was neither asked nor given, and the struggle assumed more than ever the character of a war of extermination. The country devastated by these incessant and destructive inroads never recovered its prosperity. The once beautiful regions of the Ebro and the Pisuerga now present to the eye the sombre and monotonous aspect of a desert, and portions of the valley of the Guadalquivir, which under Moorish rule were clothed with extensive orchards and luxuriant harvests, have lapsed into primeval desolation. The ruthlessness with which these wars were prosecuted bears ample testimony to the savage inhumanity of that age. Considerations of mercy seldom influenced the conduct of the victor. Engagements contracted under circumstances of peculiar solemnity were violated without provocation and without excuse. In the perpetration of these enormities the Christians, encouraged and absolved by their spiritual advisers, far surpassed their antagonists. No attention was paid to the pitiful appeals of enemies stricken in the heat of battle. The heads of rebellious princes were fixed on the battlements of cities; their limbs, embalmed with campher, were exhibited as trophies in the palace of the conqueror. When a place was taken by storm, neither age, nor sex, nor infirmity were regarded by the infuriated assailants. The discovery of hidden gold by the application of torture was a favorite amusement of the Christian soldiery. If the number of captives became inconveniently large, the least valuable were butchered. The licentious passions of the Castilians were exercised without restraint upon the weak and the defenceless. Women were violated before the eyes of their husbands and fathers. The mansions of Christian nobles rivalled in their treasures of Moorish beauty the harems of the most voluptuous Andalusian princes. In the alluring diversions of sensuality, unsanctioned by law and prohibited by religion, the dignitaries of the Church were as ever pre-eminently conspicuous; and their lovely concubines, attired with a magnificence only to be procured by the use of ecclesiastical wealth, appeared at court with their lords, equally careless of unfavorable comment or of public scandal.
In Africa the movements of Abd-al-Mumen, who had been the general of the Almohades and was now their sovereign, began to excite the alarm of Ali. The successor of the Mahdi began his reign with an expedition whose destructive course extended to the city of Morocco. Tashfin, the ablest of the Almoravide captains, was recalled from Spain; but, despite his reputation and the skilful disposition of his forces, the battalions of Ali, dominated by a craven and superstitious fear, instinctively recoiled from the presence of the enemy. All the experience and resolution of the youthful prince, who had redeemed the Moslem cause in the Peninsula, were insufficient to counteract the evil influence emanating from religious fraud, which, by the force of a distempered imagination, could transform a bold and courageous people into a race of poltroons and slaves. His continual reverses preyed upon the mind of Ali, and his moments were distracted by the signs of the imminent and apparently inevitable collapse of his power. The memory of his early grandeur offered a distressing contrast to the misfortunes of his declining years; and, overcome with mortification and sorrow, he passed from life, bequeathing to his son Tashfin a disheartened army, an exhausted treasury, and a royal inheritance of diminished jurisdiction and doubtful value.
The ill-fortune of Tashfin followed him upon the throne. Defeated by Abd-al-Mumen, he collected all his resources for a supreme and final effort. Such of the Desert tribes as had held aloof from the Mahdi were enlisted. Every available soldier in Africa was called to arms. The garrisons of Andalusia were almost denuded of troops. With the Moorish squadrons of Spain came also a body of four thousand Mozarabes, who, accustomed to long service under Moslem standards, had almost forgotten their ancestry, their traditions, and their faith. These auxiliaries, amenable to discipline and experienced in border warfare, were far more formidable than their scanty numbers would denote.
On the plains of Tlemcen the two armies whose valor was to decide the fate of an empire faced each other. The Almoravides far outnumbered their foes, but the mystic spell of superstition more than compensated for numerical superiority; the soldiers of Tashfin were terrified by imaginary apparitions and supernatural voices, and after a brief but sanguinary contest Abd-al-Mumen remained master of the field. Tashfin was soon afterwards killed in the vicinity of Oran by a fall from a precipice, and with his death vanished the last hope of the Almoravide monarchy.
During the year 1145 a famous landmark of the Mediterranean, of unknown antiquity, but most probably of Phœnician origin, was destroyed. Near the city of Cadiz, and built in the waters of the bay, had long stood a structure composed of a series of columns, rising above each other to the height of one hundred and eighty feet and surmounted by a colossal statue of bronze. The latter represented a man with his right arm extended towards the Strait of Gibraltar and grasping in his hand a key. The entire statue was heavily plated with gold, and was a conspicuous object for a distance of many leagues. Its origin was not less mysterious than the reason for its preservation for nearly four centuries and a half after the Moslem conquest. The well-known iconoclastic propensities of the followers of Mohammed were indulged with every opportunity and against every symbol of idolatrous worship. There was probably no souvenir of Pagan antiquity in Africa or Spain so prominent and so well known as the effigy which, for a period unrecorded even by tradition, indicated to the mariner the gateway of the Mediterranean. The Romans and the Goths, confounding it with the two historic promontories of Europe and Africa, called the imposing structure that supported it the Pillars of Hercules. But it certainly had no connection with that divinity. His temple stood some miles away upon an island, and it was the distinctive peculiarity of his worship among the Phœnicians that he was never represented under a physical form. To the Arabs the statue was known as “The Idol of Cadiz.” A singular fatality had preserved it from the zeal and fury of early sectaries of Islam. It had, no doubt, often awakened the pious horror of devout pilgrims on their way to the shrine of the western Mecca. It had stimulated the curiosity of the antiquary during the scientific period of the khalifate. It had pointed the way to many an invading squadron. It had witnessed the success or the failure of many revolutions. The truculent Norman pirates had viewed its gigantic dimensions with superstitious terror. In the sagas of Scandinavia is preserved the tradition that St. Olaf and his freebooters were, during the eleventh century, deterred from further prosecution of their ravages on the coast of the Peninsula by a vision which its presence inspired. Its immunity from the effects of fanaticism is not less remarkable than its long exemption from the violence of rapacious marauders. A great treasure was said to be concealed beneath the foundations of the tower. It was also the general belief—not confined to the Peninsula, but prevalent throughout Europe—that this famous statue was of solid gold. Its brilliancy, which had remained untarnished by exposure for so many centuries, tended to confirm, if not to absolutely establish, this opinion.
At last, in the twelfth century, the Admiral Ibn-Mamun, having revolted against the Almoravides, caused the statue to be overthrown and broken to pieces. The material was then discovered to be bronze, but the gold with which it was covered brought twelve thousand dinars, a sum now equal to a hundred and ninety-two thousand dollars.
Relieved of all apprehensions from his most dangerous adversary, Abd-al-Mumen attacked and captured in succession the great cities of Africa. Fez offered a desperate resistance, but was taken by damming the river by which it was traversed, until the pent-up waters, bursting their bounds, swept away a large portion of the walls. Mequinez, Aghmat, Salé capitulated. Then the siege of Morocco was begun. To convince the inhabitants of his inflexible purpose, the Almohade general caused a permanent encampment, which resembled, in the regular and substantial character of its edifices, a handsome and well-built city, to be constructed before its walls. The enterprise was prosecuted with unusual pertinacity and vigor. In a sally a large detachment of the Almoravides was decoyed into an ambuscade and cut to pieces, and, with numbers sensibly reduced by this catastrophe, the garrison confined itself for the future to repelling the scaling parties of the enemy. The complete investment of the city was soon followed by famine. The dead lay everywhere in ghastly heaps. The living drew lots to decide who should be sacrificed to provide a horrible repast for his perishing companions. Such was the awful mortality that two hundred thousand persons died of starvation and disease. Aware of the inevitable consequences of surrendering to barbarians without faith or mercy, the garrison contended bravely against hope and fortune. Finally, some Mozarabe soldiers entered into communication with Abd-al-Mumen, and it was agreed that a gate should be opened during the disorder attending a general attack. At daybreak the Almohades, eager for revenge and booty, swarmed into the city. The scimetar and the lance completed the work which famine had not had time to finish. Seventy thousand defenceless persons were massacred. Even this frightful sacrifice did not satiate the besiegers’ desire for blood. For three days such scenes were enacted as could only be tolerated among men insensible to motives of humanity and ignorant of the laws of war. Abd-al-Mumen decapitated with his own hand Abu-Ishak, the son and successor of Tashfin. The command then went forth that not one of the hated sect should be spared. Great numbers of women and children were slaughtered by the savage conquerors and the survivors sold into slavery. Every mosque was levelled with the ground as the only way to purify the houses of God from the abominations of the heretical Almoravides. Preparations were immediately made to erect upon their sites others more extensive and magnificent, and Abd-al-Mumen, who all the while had remained outside the gates, marched away to other scenes of conquest.
A century had elapsed since Abdallah-Ibn-Jahsim had announced to the tribesmen of Lamtounah his mission as the apostle of political integrity and religious reformation. Based upon his teachings, and supported by his military genius and the prowess of his followers, a mighty empire had arisen. With incredible rapidity it had combined in apparently indissoluble union contending nationalities, hostile dogmas, antagonistic temporal interests. It had subjugated a great part of the continent of Africa. It had reconciled the discordant social and political elements which for generations had disturbed the peace and diminished the power of the Moslem states of Spain. It had checked the progress of Christian conquest. By its sweeping victories it had revived the memory of the splendid achievements of the Western Khalifate. The largest armies that had ever trodden the soil of the Peninsula had marched under its banners. Its chiefs were, without exception, men of signal ability. Some, it is true, were destitute of experience in the art of government, but endowed with rare executive talents; others were warriors of established renown; all had exhibited in the exalted post to which they had been called by fortune the qualities of great generals, diplomatists, legislators. The genius of the last of that princely race, had his designs not been frustrated by the Almohade revolution, promised the eventual restoration of Moorish rule over much, if not all, of the territory included in the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile. The rise and progress of no dynasty to boundless power had been so rapid; the decline of none had been more decided or its extinction more destructive and fatal. Mohammedan Spain, still the most civilized and polished of countries, whose court had once dictated the policy of Western Europe; whose alliance had been assiduously courted by Christian kings and emperors; whose armies marched each year to victory; whose fleets monopolized the trade of the seas; whose capital was the literary centre of the world, had been degraded to a dependency of the most ignorant, the most superstitious, the most brutal of nations. The hazardous experiment of establishing a peaceable union between such incongruous and inimical populations must have resulted in failure. Still less could such an undertaking have succeeded when attempted by force. The ethnical elements of Spain and Africa could never have coalesced into a single people. Their enmity was irreconcilable. Their tastes were dissimilar. The Hispano-Arab was a scholar, a philosopher, a gentleman. In spite of the evils which afflicted his country, his colleges and academies were still largely attended by the ambitious youth of distant, often of hostile, nations. He still had access to the fragmentary remains of the great libraries of the khalifs. The architectural monuments of his ancestors still graced, in all their splendor and beauty, the esplanades and thoroughfares of his capitals. Pilgrims still admired with astonishment and rapture the most magnificent temple of Islam. The sacred volume ascribed to the martyred Othman, enshrined in its embossed and jewel-studded casket, still received, amidst the lavish sculpture and sparkling enamels of the Mihrab, the reverential homage of the Faithful. The diminished but not unimportant commerce of his seaports; the manufacturing establishments, whose products were largely exported to foreign countries; the contracted but marvellously fertile area of his agricultural territory, daily reminded the Spanish Moslem of the wisdom and the enterprise developed by the subjects of that glorious empire whose institutions, whose traditions, whose refined tastes, whose intellectual pre-eminence he had inherited.
Far different was it with the conqueror who had appropriated and abused the inestimable remains of all this greatness. From first to last his movements seemed to have been inspired by the genius of disorganization and ruin. The noble attributes of piety and magnanimity were absolutely foreign to his nature. He spared no foe. He forgave no injury. The essential doctrines of the religion he nominally professed were in reality unknown to him. He was wholly ignorant of letters. In the gratification of his savage passions the shedding of blood took precedence of the grovelling instinct of avarice or the more gentle allurements of licentious pleasures. His stolid nature could not appreciate the charms of art, the benefits of science, the delights and the consolations of literature, the advantages of philosophy. All that did not contribute to sensual enjoyment he turned from with disdain. Descended from a race of brigands, who had from time immemorial exercised on the caravans of the Desert the stratagems and the violence of their nefarious calling, he considered the menial and sedentary occupations of agricultural and manufacturing industry as only fit for the hireling and the slave. Ever accustomed to individual freedom, he obeyed only the orders of his sheik, who owed his promotion to the suffrage of the tribe, and who was often elected or deposed with equal haste and facility. The monarch was frequently as unlettered as his meanest subject. Yusuf could neither read nor write, and understood but imperfectly the copious and polished idiom spoken in many provinces of his dominions. Ali was less intelligent than many a youth in the primary schools of Cordova. This wide-spread and deplorable contempt for learning virtually placed the power of the state in the hands of a class least qualified to wield it; and the intrigues and exactions of the Mohammedan clergy, supplemented with African barbarism and rapacity, contributed more than domestic convulsions or Christian valor to finally subvert the unstable but still majestic fabric of the Saracen power.
The Moslem factions of the Peninsula joined in precarious union under the sceptre of the Almoravides beheld with dismal forebodings the successive and crushing misfortunes which preceded the extinction of that dynasty. Neither religious accord nor political necessity would have reconciled them to the domination of a race between whose members and themselves there existed an irreconcilable antipathy. But on many points of theological controversy the liberal views of the most learned Moorish doctors shocked the strict disciplinarians of Islam. These accomplished polemical scholars had imbibed in the Universities of Seville and Cordova ideas highly offensive to the severely orthodox; they had indulged their wit at the expense of hypocrisy and ignorance in the intellectual atmosphere of the court, and the vengeance of those who were recently the objects of their satire had now descended with redoubled force upon the thoughtless aggressors. All books except the Koran and the Sunnah fell under the royal displeasure. The study of philosophy, although prohibited in the schools, was, as is usual under such circumstances, diligently pursued in secret. The intellectual habits of centuries were not to be abolished by an imperial edict, and the reprobation of a band of hypocrites and zealots who preached self-denial and abstemiousness, and were notoriously guilty of the grossest offences against morality, was unable to entirely suppress the accumulation and the diffusion of knowledge. No country in Europe, however, was more exclusively and disastrously controlled by ecclesiastical influence than was Moorish Spain under the rule of the Almoravides.