The propagators of a form of religion which relies for its success upon the extermination of all who refuse assent to its dogmas have certainly little faith in the truth or the celestial inspiration of the maxims which they deem it necessary to resort to force to inculcate. During the ascendency of the papal power no one within its reach could publicly profess heretical doctrines and live. Under the Ommeyades and the Aghlabites both the misbeliever and the infidel were safe on the payment of tribute. The occasional outbursts of Moslem fanaticism were directed against literature; the spirit of Christian persecution—a spirit sadly at variance with that evinced by the gentleness and meekness of its Divine Founder—raged fiercely against both literature and humanity. Amru and Al-Mansur burned books. Innocent III. and Calvin tortured men.
The Assyrian, Carthaginian, Roman, and Hispano-Arab empires lasted each about eight hundred years. Of two of these the memory alone survives. A number of defaced monuments, a fragmentary literature, preserve the traditions of the third. The genius of the Moslem, superior to those of all his predecessors, has perpetuated itself in the scientific inspiration and progressive energy of every succeeding age. Remarkable for its unparalleled success, while hampered by tremendous obstacles,—war, sedition, disorder, barbarian supremacy,—it is instructive to reflect what it might have accomplished under the most favorable auspices, when at the height of their prosperity the Moors of Europe controlled the Mediterranean. The latter occupied and colonized in turn the important posts of Sardinia, Corsica, Cyprus, Malta. Their revenues were tenfold greater than those of any contemporaneous state. The inexhaustible population of Africa could be constantly drawn on for hundreds of thousands of soldiers, whose abstemious lives, blind fanaticism, and reckless bravery made them most formidable adversaries. The fleets of the Sicilian emirs threatened the coast of Asia Minor. The Arab governors of Spain established permanent outposts as far as Lyons. The pirates of Fraxinet fortified and held for many years the passes of the Alps. The tracks of the Saracen armies marching northward from Calabria and southward from Provence and Switzerland overlapped on the plains of Lombardy. Such opportunities for conquest have rarely been enjoyed or neglected by any military power. Civil discord and tribal jealousy were all that prevented Europe from being Mohammedanized. In the polity of the Arabs, wherever domiciled, the traditions of the Desert invariably prevailed. The organization of the state was modelled after those of the family and the tribe. No allowance was made for the changed conditions resulting from the extension of dominion and the increase of knowledge. Under such circumstances there could be no cohesion among the parts of the constantly tottering fabric of Moslem power, which, in fact, was undermined from the very beginning. From this instability, the Western Khalifate has been, with some truth, compared to a Bedouin encampment. The defects of an anomalous constitution were aggravated by intestine conflict. Factional hostility in Arabian Spain was always more pronounced and bitter than hatred of the Christian foe.
A great victory and a few unimportant skirmishes gained for the Moslems in less than two years control of the richest kingdom in Europe. To reconquer it required eight centuries and more than five thousand battles. The followers of Pelayus, when the long struggle for Christian supremacy began, were but thirty in number. The host mustered by Ferdinand and Isabella before Granada amounted to nearly a hundred thousand men. The religious character which invested the Reconquest, and from which its prosecution eventually became inseparable, has stamped itself indelibly and ruinously upon the Spanish people. The cost of the triumph was incalculable. It impoverished forever great provinces. It drenched the soil of the entire Peninsula with blood. A single campaign often destroyed an army. The casualties of a single siege sometimes swept away numbers equal to the inhabitants of a populous city. At Baza alone, in the short space of seven months, twenty-one thousand Castilians perished.
The almost universal disbelief in Moorish civilization is hardly less remarkable than its creation and progress. Sectarian prejudice, ignorance of Arabic, and a fixed determination to acknowledge no obligation to infidels have concurred to establish and confirm the popular opinion. To this end the Church has always lent its powerful, often omnipotent, aid. Yet, in spite of systematic suppression of facts and long-continued misrepresentations, it cannot now be denied that no race effected so much for all that concerns the practical welfare of mankind as the Spanish Mohammedans; that no race of kings has deserved so large a measure of fame as that which traced its lineage to Abd-al-Rahman I.
Such was the civilization which the Spanish and Sicilian Arabs bequeathed to Europe. Their conquests and their influence, their progress in the arts of peace, their industrial and economical inventions, the precocity of their mental development, the perpetuation of their advanced ideas under the most discouraging conditions which can be conceived, present an example without parallel in the history of nations. Their origin had nothing in common with that of any European people. Their religion was avowedly inimical to the one which was professed from the Mediterranean coast to the verge of the Arctic Circle. Their political and domestic institutions were abhorrent to the feelings of their neighbors, their allies, their enemies. From the hour when Tarik landed at Gibraltar to that when Boabdil surrendered the keys of the Alhambra was a period of constant and relentless hostility. Such circumstances as these are not ordinarily propitious to the material or intellectual advancement of mankind.
In the face of such formidable obstacles a mighty empire was founded. The very causes which seemed liable to seriously affect its integrity and permanence in reality increased its strength. Its military power became a standing menace to every state of Christendom. Its fleets of armed galleys dominated the seas. The Saracens of Sicily sacked the suburbs of Rome and insulted the sacred majesty of the Holy Father in the Vatican. In every trade-centre of the East and West, in the streets of Canton and Delhi, in the bazaars of Damascus, along the crowded quays of Alexandria, beside the scattered wells of the Sahara, at the great fairs of Sweden, Germany, and Russia, in the splendid markets of Constantinople, the Moorish merchants and Hebrew brokers of Spain outstripped all commercial competitors in the amounts of their purchases and the shrewdness of their bargains. The wealth which resulted from this vast system of trade was almost inconceivable. In addition, the agricultural and mineral resources of the country, great in themselves, were developed beyond all precedent. The treasures thus amassed were expended in public works, whose neglected ruins amaze the traveller; in the promotion of educational advantages that modern experience and energy have never been able to surpass; in the collection of immense libraries; in the maintenance of a court with whose magnificence the traditional luxury of the Byzantine princes was not worthy of comparison; in the celebration of a worship whose furniture and appointments transcended, in richness and beauty, the vaunted pomp and semi-barbaric ceremonial of pontifical Rome.
It is both popular and fashionable to ascribe to the influence of the Crusades the awakening of the spirit of progress which ultimately led to the revival of letters and to the political and social regeneration of Europe. But the Crusades were only, in an indirect and secondary manner, a factor of civilization. On the other hand, their general tendency was signally destructive. Their track has been compared to that left by a swarm of locusts. Many works of classic genius perished in the sack of Constantinople. The Moslem library of Tripoli, which contained two hundred thousand volumes, was burned when that city was taken by the soldiers of the Cross. It is a well-established fact that few of the latter were actuated by religious motives. Their crimes cast discredit upon their cause and secured the eternal contempt of the Oriental; for even the name of Christianity was unworthily degraded by such vile associations. The results produced upon Europe by these expeditions, instead of being humanizing, were most disastrous. Whole districts were depopulated. The hereditary estates of the nobility were transferred to the Church, whose ministers alone possessed the means of purchase, and who, through promoting the insane spirit of fanaticism by which they subsequently profited, secured a double measure of consequence and power. The Papacy soon controlled the wealth of Christendom, and its irresponsible authority increased in proportion to its influence. With despotism came tyranny, with tyranny persecution. The principle of forcing the acceptance of religious dogmas upon armed enemies was extended to the conviction of recalcitrant sectaries by torture. The atrocities of religious conflict, the war of the Albigenses, the unspeakable horrors of the Inquisition, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, are largely attributable to the sanguinary tastes engendered by the Crusades. In other respects, as well, their influence was highly detrimental to humanity. They introduced vices hitherto confined to the East, and which are to this day blots upon the society of the great European capitals. They filled Europe with leprosy or with an affection similar to it, from which eminent medical authorities have deduced the origin of the most obstinate and loathsome of contagious diseases. They introduced the plague, one visitation of which swept away thirteen million persons. The rupture of family ties occasioned by the absence of such multitudes fostered every form of licentiousness. In some provinces vast tracts of fertile soil, soon overgrown with brushwood, relapsed into primeval wildness. In others, deprived of the means of preserving order, the country became a prey to outlaws. While tens of thousands of armed fanatics were fighting for the Christian cause in Syria, the barbarians of Northern Europe were worshipping idols and serpents and offering human sacrifices.
The Crusades, however, were not wholly an unmixed evil. They increased the power of the clergy, but they exterminated a large part of the most worthless elements of society. It has been estimated that six million persons perished in these expeditions. They made the Papacy autocratic; but, by destroying feudalism through the alienation of the estates of the barons, they greatly improved the condition of the serf. The necessity for treating victims of the horrible maladies contracted in Palestine led to the foundation of the first hospitals in Christendom. They directed the attention of scholars to the study of works in Arabic, a language hitherto unknown outside of Mussulman countries. It was in 1142 that Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, went to Toledo and made a translation of the Koran into Latin, in order that he might demonstrate the falsity of the doctrines of Islamism. Had these successive deluges of fanatics been poured upon the Spanish Peninsula instead of upon the Holy Land, not the slightest trace of Moslem learning and civilization could have survived their attack.
The benefits arising from the Crusades were far from sufficient to counterbalance their injurious effects. They gave, however, a great impetus to commerce, especially through the enterprise of the Italian republics. They awakened a taste for luxuries which had been hitherto unknown, even to royalty. They stimulated manufactures, particularly those connected with the ornamental arts of glass, wood, ivory, and metals. In one respect, their influence promoted immensely the cause of civilization. Familiarity with Moslem valor, politeness, and culture removed the prejudices maintained through centuries of priestcraft and ignorance by the benighted nations of Europe. Returning pilgrims and adventurers brought back from the Holy Land tales of magnificent cities, of incredible treasures, of deeds of heroism and chivalry, which had no counterparts in any state of Christendom. Accounts of these marvels awakened not only a desire to imitate them, but aroused an involuntary admiration for the superiority of their authors. At the time of the first Crusade, in the closing years of the eleventh century, Moorish civilization in the Peninsula had attained its highest perfection. While its influence had long been imperceptibly exerted upon the populations of France and Italy, deep-seated hatred of the followers of Mohammed had retarded the general diffusion of its benefits. In consequence of the repeated expeditions to Palestine, an increased demand for the manufactures and the agricultural products of Moorish Spain was created. Its language, its improvisations, its literature, soon became familiar to Europe. Even its sports were borrowed, and the graceful courses of the arena, adapted to the rude and ferocious tastes of baronial society, became the most popular of mediæval diversions. The chivalric sentiments inseparable from knightly exercises contributed to social refinement and to the exaltation of woman. The troubadour carried everywhere the amatory songs which had long enchanted the polished society of Andalusia. The coarseness and asperity of feudal manners were softened, and a marked improvement characterized every form of official and domestic intercourse. It is beyond the Pyrenees, and not to the Orient, that the historian must look for the origin of modern civilization.
In rapidity of conquest, in extent of dominion, in successful propagation of religious belief, in ability to profit by the resources of Nature, in profundity of knowledge and versatility of intellect, no people have ever approached the Arabs. Their conquests were secured, and their government made permanent, by that peculiar provision of their civil polity which, appealing to the strongest of human passions and sanctioned by the injunctions of their Prophet, permitted the appropriation of the women of vanquished nations. Their commerce, to which in a land destitute of agricultural resources they were impelled by necessity, developed their trading propensities, and by association from a remote age with their enterprising neighbors, the Phœnicians, familiarized them with the men of all races and the products of all countries; enlarged their faculties; sharpened their intellects; and made them capable of becoming, in after times, the conquerors and the lawgivers of the world. Prodigious energy and aggressiveness were their leading characteristics. These traits were intensified by various, sometimes by unworthy, motives,—by the love of pleasure, the thirst of avarice, the fire of ambition,—as well as by the precepts and promises of a religion congenial to their tastes, their habits, and their excessively romantic and adventurous nature. Of all the dynasties established by the Successors of the Prophet, that of the Ommeyades of Spain is indisputably entitled to the most exalted rank.