The Moors in Spain

by Stanley Lane-Poole

IV.
A YOUNG PRETENDER.

FOR six hundred years the greater part of the Mohammedan Empire was nominally under the authority of a central ruler called a Khalif, a title which signifies a "successor" or "substitute." At first this authority was real and powerful: the Khalif appointed the governors of all the provinces, from Spain to the borders of the Hindu Kush, and removed any of them at his pleasure. But the empire was too large to hold together round a central pivot for any length of time, and gradually various local governors made themselves virtually independent, although they generally professed the utmost devotion to the Khalif and paid him every honour except obedience. By degrees even this show of respect was thrown off, and dynasties arose which espoused heretical tenets, repudiated the spiritual supremacy of the Khalif, and denounced him and all his line as usurpers. Finally the time came when the Khalifs were as weak in temporal authority as the Pope of Rome, and were even kept prisoners in their palace by the mercenary body-guard they had hired to protect them against their rebellious nobles. This took place about three hundred years after the foundation of the Khalifate; and for the second half of their existence the Khalifs were little more than ciphers to be played with by the great princes of the empire and to contribute a little pomp to their coronations. Finally the Khalifate was abolished in Asia by the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century, and though the title is still claimed by the Sultan of Turkey, there is no Khalif now in the old comprehensive sense of the word.[10]

The earliest province to shake off the authority of the Khalif was Andalusia. To understand how this happened, we must remember that the Khalifs did not succeed one another in one unbroken line of family inheritance. After the first four (or "orthodox") Khalifs, Abu-Bekr, Omar, Othmān, and Aly, who were elected more or less by popular vote, the Syrian party set up Moāwia as Khalif at Damascus, and from him sprang the family of the Omeyyad Khalifs, so called from their ancestor Omeyya. There were fourteen Omeyyad Khalifs, who reigned from 661 to 750, when they were deposed by Es-Seffāh, "the Butcher," who was the first of the second dynasty of Khalifs, called Abbāside, after their ancestor Abbās, an uncle of the Prophet Mohammed. The Abbāside Khalifs transferred the seat of government from Damascus to Baghdad, and held the Khalifate until its destruction by the Mongols in 1258. Among the members of the deposed family of the Omeyyads was Abd-er-Rahmān, a name which means "Servant of the Merciful God." Most of his relations were exterminated by the ruthless Abbāside; they were hunted down in all parts of the world and slain without mercy. Abd-er-Rahmān fled like the rest, but with better fortune, for he reached the banks of the Euphrates in safety. One day, as he sat in his tent watching his little boy playing outside, the child ran to him in affright, and, going out to discover the cause, Abd-er-Rahmān saw the village in confusion, and the black standards of the Abbāsides on the horizon. Hastily seizing up his child, the young prince rushed out of the village, and reached the river. Here the enemy almost came up with them, and called out that they need have no fear, for no injury would be done to them. A young brother, who had accompanied him, and who was exhausted with swimming, turned back and his head was immediately severed from his body; but Abd-er-Rahmān held on till he reached the other side, bearing his child, and followed by his servant Bedr. Once more on firm earth, they journeyed night and day till they came to Africa, where the rest of his family joined them, and the sole survivor of the Omeyyad princes had leisure to think of his future.

He was but twenty years of age, and full of hope and ambition. His mental powers were considerable, and to these he added the advantages of a noble stature and great physical energy and courage. The Arab historians, however, add the unfavourable details that he was blind of one eye and devoid of the sense of smell. In his childhood wise men had predicted great things of his future, and in spite of the ruin of his family he was not yet daunted. His first thoughts turned to Africa; for he clearly perceived that the success of the Abbāsides had left him no chance in the East. But after five years of wandering about the Barbary coast he realized that the Arab governor was not easily to be overturned, and that the already revolted Berbers in the West would not willingly surrender their newly-won independence for the empty glory of being ruled by an Omeyyad. His glance, therefore, was now directed towards Andalusia, where the various factions, in their perpetual strife, offered an opening to any clever pretender, and much more to one who could bring such hereditary claims as Abd-er-Rahmān. He therefore sent his servant Bedr to the chiefs of the Syrian party in Spain, among whom many were freedmen of the Omeyyads and were thus bound by the Arab code of honour to succour any relation of their former patrons. Bedr found these chiefs willing to receive the young prince, and, after some negotiation with the hostile factions, the support of the men from the Yemen was also promised. Upon this Bedr returned to Africa.

Abd-er-Rahmān was saying his prayers on the seashore when he saw the vessel approaching which brought him the good news; and, prone as all Easterns are to draw omens from insignificant circumstances, the name of the first envoy from Andalusia who was presented to him, Abu-Ghālib Temmām (which means Father of Conquest Attainment) suggested a happy fate: "We shall attain our object," cried the prince, "and conquer the land!" Without delay he stepped on board, and they sailed for Spain in September, 755. The coming of the survivor of the Omeyyads to Andalusia was like a page of romance, like the arrival of the Young Pretender in Scotland in 1745. The news spread like a conflagration through the land; the old adherents of the royal family hurried to pay him homage; the descendants of the Omeyyad freedmen put themselves under his orders. Even the Yemen clans, though they could not be expected to feel any peculiar sentiment for the young prince, were sufficiently infected by the zeal of his adherents to keep to their promise and band together for his support. The Governor of Andalusia found himself deserted by most of his troops and forced to wait for a new army; and meanwhile the winter rains made a campaign impossible, and left Abd-er-Rahmān leisure to recruit and organize his forces.

In the spring of the following year the struggle began in earnest. Abd-er-Rahmān was received with enthusiasm at Archidona and Seville, and thence prepared to march on Cordova. Yūsuf, the governor, advanced to resist him, but the Guadalquivir was swollen with rains, and the two armies, on opposite banks, raced with each other who should first arrive at Cordova. At length Abd-er-Rahmān, by means of a deceitful stratagem, unworthy of a prince of romance, induced Yūsuf to let him cross the now falling river under pretext of peace; and once on the other side, he fell upon the unsuspecting enemy. Victory declared itself for the prince, and he entered Cordova in triumph. He had the grace to exert himself to arrest the plundering passions of his troops, and to place the harīm or women-folk of the ex-governor in safety. Before the year was out he was master of all the Mohammedan part of Spain, and the dynasty of the Omeyyads of Cordova, destined to endure for nearly three centuries, was established.[11]

The King of Cordova, however, was not firmly seated without many a struggle. Abd-er-Rahmān had indeed been placed on the throne, but the feat had been accomplished by a small faction out of the numerous parties that divided the land. The new Sultan was, however, better able than most princes to hold his own amidst the striving elements of his kingdom. Prompt and decisive in action, troubled by few scruples, by turns terribly severe and perfidiously diplomatic, his policy was always equal to an emergency; and there were not a few occasions on which it was put to the test. He had not been long in Andalusia when Ibn-Mughīth sailed from Africa to set up the black standards of the Abbāsides in Spain. He landed in the province of Beja, and soon found supporters among the disaffected, always ready to join in some new thing. Abd-er-Rahmān was besieged for two months in Carmona. The situation was perilous in the extreme, for every day gave the enemy more opportunity of increasing their forces. Abd-er-Rahmān, ever full of resource, hearing that the enemy had somewhat relaxed their precautions, gathered together seven hundred of his bravest followers, kindled a great fire, and, saying that it was now a question of death or victory, flung his scabbard into the flames. The seven hundred followed his example, in token of their resolution never to sheathe their swords again till they were free, and, sallying out after their leader, fell upon the besiegers tooth and nail. The Abbāside invasion was utterly annihilated. Abd-er-Rahmān, with the ferocity that occasionally disfigured him, put their leaders' heads in a bag, with descriptive labels attached to their ears, and confided the precious parcel to a pilgrim bound for Mekka, by whom it was put into the hands of the Abbāside Khalif Mansūr himself. When the Khalif had seen the contents of the bag, he was very wroth; but he could not help exclaiming, "Thank God there is a sea between that man and me!" While cordially detesting the successful Sultan of Cordova, his Abbāside foe was forced to render homage to his skill and courage. He called Abd-er-Rahmān "the hawk of the Koreysh," the falcon of the Prophet's own tribe. "Wonderful," he would exclaim, "is the daring, wisdom, and prudence, he has shown! To enter the paths of destruction, throw himself into a distant land, hard to approach, and well defended; there to profit by the jealousies of the rival parties, to make them turn their arms against one another instead of against himself; to win the homage and obedience of his subjects; and, having overcome every difficulty, to rule supreme lord of all! Of a truth, no man before him has done this!"

The defeat of the Abbāside invasion was followed by other successes on the part of the new Sultan. He induced the people of Toledo, who had long held out against him, to consent to a peace and deliver up their chiefs; and the leaders were grossly humiliated and then crucified. The chief of the Yemenite faction proving dangerous, Abd-er-Rahmān gave him a safe-conduct, and thus enticed him into his palace, where he tried to stab him with his own hand, but finding the Arab too vigorous, called in the guard and had him assassinated. Almost immediately, a great revolt of the Berbers of the northern borders occurred. Ten years were occupied in reducing them to obedience, and meanwhile the Yemenites, burning with vengeance for the murder of their chief, took advantage of the Sultan's absence in the north to rise. They had not yet realized the energy or the astuteness of the man. He had already set the revolted Berbers by the ears by playing upon their petty jealousies; and he now exerted his diplomacy to breed discord among the Yemenites. He tampered with the Berbers who formed a large part of their army, so that they deserted in the midst of the fray, and Abd-er-Rahmān's soldiers fell upon the flying multitude, until thirty thousand bodies lay on the field: their huge grave long remained a sight to be seen by the curious. Then followed that formidable coalition between three disaffected Arab chiefs and Charlemagne, which was so near destroying the fabric that Abd-er-Rahmān had painfully built up, but collapsed before Zaragoza and at Roncesvalles without a single blow from the very person they had assembled to destroy.

Henceforward the Sultan was allowed to enjoy in comparative peace the fruits of his victories. He had subdued all the hostile elements in Spain to his iron will; he had cast down the proud Arab chiefs who had dared to measure swords with him; he had massacred, or assassinated, the leaders of rebellion, and had proved himself master of the position. But tyranny, cruel and perfidious as his, brings its own punishment. The tyrant may force the submission, but he cannot compel the devotion of his people, and the empire that is won by the sword must be sustained by the same weapon. Honest men refused to enter into the service of a lord who could betray and slay as did this Sultan; his old supporters, those who had first welcomed him to Spain, now turned coldly away when they saw the tyrant in his naked cruelty; his own relations, who had flocked over to his Court, as an asylum from the Abbāsides, found his despotism so intolerable that they plotted again and again to depose him, with the inevitable result of losing their heads. Abd-er-Rahmān was left in mournful solitude. His old friends had deserted him; his enemies, though helpless, cursed him none the less; his very kinsmen and servants turned against him. It was partly that the long war with faction had spoilt a fine nature; partly that the character was relentless. No longer could he mingle as before in the crowds that thronged the streets of Cordova; suspicious of every one, wrapped in gloomy thoughts and distracted by bloody memories, he rode through the streets surrounded by a strong guard of foreigners. Forty thousand Africans, whose devotion to their paymaster was equalled by their hatred of the whole population whom they repressed, formed the Sultan's protection against the people whom he ground under his heel. In his desolation he wrote a poem on a palm which he transplanted from the land of his ancestors—for, like most Andalusian Arabs, he was something of a poet—in which he compassionated the tree for its exile: "Like me, thou art separated from relations and friends; thou didst grow in a different soil, and now thou art far from the land of thy birth." He had accomplished the object which he had set before himself in the days of his young ambition, when he came a stranger and alone to subdue a kingdom: he had brought the Arabs and Berbers into subjection, and restored order and peace in the land; but he had done it all at the expense of his subjects' hearts. The handsome youth who had come like "the young chevalier" to win the homage and devotion of the Spanish Arabs, after thirty-two years went down to his grave a detested tyrant, upheld in his blood-stained throne only by the swords of mercenaries whose loyalty was purchased by gold. He had inaugurated the sway of the sword in Spain, and his successors would have to maintain the principle. As the great historian of the Moors has observed, it is not easy to see by what other means the turbulent factions of Arabs and Berbers were to be kept in order, or how anarchy was to be averted without severe measures of repression: neither of these races was accustomed to monarchy. Nevertheless a tyranny so sustained formed a melancholy spectacle, despite all the glories and triumphs that illumined it.