The Moors in Spain

by Stanley Lane-Poole

An ancient Arab historian, Ibn-Hayyān, gives the following portrait of the first Sultan of Cordova: "Abd-er-Rahman was kind-hearted and well disposed to mercy. He was eloquent in his speech, and endowed with a quick perception. He was very slow in his determinations, but constant and persevering in carrying them into effect. He was active and stirring; he would never lie in repose, or abandon himself to indulgence. He never entrusted the affairs of government to any one, but administered them himself; yet he never failed to consult in cases of difficulty the men of wisdom and experience. He was a brave and intrepid warrior, always the first in the battle-field; terrible in his anger, and intolerant of opposition: his countenance inspired awe in those who approached him, friends and foes alike. He was wont to follow biers and pray over the dead, and in the mosque on Fridays he would often enter the pulpit and address the people. He visited the sick, and mixed with the people in their rejoicings." This is doubtless the young Abd-er-Rahmān, before opposition and conspiracy had made him suspicious and cruel. Power has often a terrible manner of punishing its possessors.

The usual question that is asked, when a despot dies, is, Who will succeed him? And the common answer is, Revolution and anarchy. A throne that is set upon steel edges does not readily pass from father to son. Yet the dynasty of Abd-er-Rahmān did not collapse with the death of its despotic founder. It was to be expected that the many hostile forces which he had with difficulty restrained, when released by his death, would have sprung into redoubled activity. Such, however, was not the case.

Partly because he had too thoroughly terrified the people for them easily to recover their courage, and partly because in his successor they recognized the very antithesis of his father—a prince to be loved and honoured—the people remained quiet for some years. Hishām, who in 788 succeeded his father, at the age of thirty, was a model of all the virtues; and, as if to make sure that he should practise them with assiduity during his brief reign, an astrologer predicted that he had but eight years to live. The Sultan naturally devoted this short space to preparing for the next world. In his youth his palace had been filled with men of science, poets, and sages; and the boy was father of the man. His acts of piety were numberless, and in him the indigent and the persecuted had a sure refuge. He would send trusty emissaries into all parts of his dominions to seek out wrong-doing and repress it, and to further the cause of righteousness. He had the streets patrolled at night to prevent riotous and vicious conduct; and the fines they levied on the evildoers were distributed among those good souls whom rain and cold could not deter from attending the mosques at night-time. The Sultan himself visited the sick, and would often go forth on stormy nights to carry food to some pious invalid and to watch beside his bedside. With all this he was no poltroon. He would lead his armies against the Christians of the North, like the thoroughbred Arab he was; and, though the people affectionately dubbed him "The Amiable" and "The Just," he could show sufficient firmness when his reign was menaced by the conspiracies of his uncles. He increased the number of his mamlūks, or body-guard, and a thousand of them were always on duty day and night on both sides of the river to protect his palace. He was a huntsman; yet so scrupulous was he that when he rebuilt the bridge of Cordova, which still stands to this day, hearing that his subjects murmured that he only built this great work to make his hunting parties more convenient, he vowed he would never cross it again; and he never did. Before the eight years had quite expired, this exemplary prince was gathered to his well-earned paradise; and then it became apparent that his very goodness had but served to stir up a new factor of rebellion in the State.

This new danger was the power of the Mohammedan priests. The term is hardly an accurate one, for in Islam there is no priesthood in the strict sense of Catholic Christianity. The men who recite the prayers and preach the weekly sermons in the mosques are laymen taken from their shops or other occupations, and appointed for the time to lead the congregations. There is no distinction between laic and cleric in Islam. Nevertheless, there is something which tallies more or less with what we mean by a priesthood. There is always in Mohammedan countries a body of men whose lives are specially devoted to religion; they may be dervishes with peculiar rites, or they may be merely theological students, pupils of some renowned teacher, whose doctrine fills them with unwonted zeal and enthusiasm; they may be reciters of the Koran, or school-masters. Such a body is found throughout the Moslem world, and it has to be reckoned with in every Mohammedan country. The students of the Azhar mosque at Cairo, the Softas of Constantinople, the Mullas of many an Eastern city, have shown what the force of fanaticism can avail in times of excitement. In Andalusia this power was now about to be displayed. The first rebellion after Abd-er-Rahmān's death came from the least expected quarter; not from the Christians, nor from any special political party of Arabs or of Berbers, but from the devout sons of Islam, the theological students of Cordova.

These students were largely composed of renegades, or the sons of renegades. It has already been seen that the Spaniards cheerfully adopted Islam, and, like most converts, became more Moslem than the Moslems themselves. Abd-er-Rahmān was far too wise, and also far too worldly, to permit the theologians—especially those of Spanish blood—any preponderating influence in his kingdom; but the pious Hishām neither saw the danger, nor, had he perceived it, would have regarded it as a danger at all. He loved to place his confidence in holy men, whose conduct was dictated by the strict observance of their religion, and in whom he failed to detect the germs of common worldly ambition and love of power. It happened, too, that at this time the theologians were headed by a singularly gifted and active mind, a favourite pupil of one of the lights of the Holy City Medina, where the Arabian Prophet was buried, and a man whose soul was devoured by that mixture of religious fervour and political ambition which has so often made havoc of nations. This doctor, Yahya, profited by the devotion and piety of Hishām to raise the theologians of Cordova to a height of influence and power that might have made his shrewd father, Abd-er-Rahmān, turn in his grave. So long, indeed, as they had their own way, all went well. But in 796, when the good Hishām departed in the odour of sanctity, a complete change came over the Court. The new Sultan, Hakam, was not indifferent to religion or in any way a reprobate; but he was gay and sociable, and enjoyed life as it came to him, without the slightest leaning towards asceticism. Such a character was wholly objectionable to the bigoted doctors of theology. They spoke of the Sultan with pious horror, publicly prayed for his conversion, and even reviled and insulted him to his face. Finding him incurable in his levity, they plotted to set up another member of his family on the throne. The conspiracy failed, and many of the leading nobles, who had joined in the plot, together with a number of fanatical doctors, were crucified. Undeterred by this, in 806 the people, stirred up by the bigots, rose again, only to be as summarily repressed as before. Even the terrible fate of the nobles of Toledo,—who had rebelled, as was their wont, and were at this time treacherously inveigled into the hands of the Crown Prince and massacred to a man,—did not deter the Cordovans from another revolt.

For seven years, indeed, the memory of the "Day of the Foss," as the massacre at Toledo was called, kept the fanatics of Cordova within bounds; but as the recollection of that fearful hole into which the murdered bodies of all the nobility of Toledo had been cast, grew fainter, there were symptoms of a fresh insurrection at the capital. Popular feeling ran very high, not only against the Sultan, because he would not wear sackcloth and ashes or pretend to be an ascetic, but still more against his large body-guard of "Mutes," so called because, being negroes and the like, they could not speak Arabic. The Mutes dared not venture in the streets of Cordova except in numbers; a single soldier was sure to be mobbed, and might be murdered. One day a wanton blow struck by a member of the guard roused the whole people. They rushed with one accord to the palace, led by the thousands of theological students who inhabited the southern suburb of the city, and seemed bent on carrying it by assault in spite of its fortifications and garrison. The Sultan Hakam looked forth over the sea of faces, and watched with consternation the devoted mob repulsing the charge of his tried cavalry; but even in this hour of desperate peril he did not lose the sang-froid which is the birthright of great men. Retiring to his hall, he told his page Hyacinth to bring him a bottle of civet, with which he proceeded calmly to perfume his hair and beard. The page could not repress his astonishment at such an occupation, when the cruel mob was even then battering at the gates; but Hakam, who was fully aware of his danger, replied: "Silence, rascal! How do you suppose the rebels would be able to find out my head among the rest, if it were not distinguished by its sweet odour?" He then summoned his officers, and took his measures for the defence. These were simple enough; but they proved effectual. He despatched his cousin with a force of cavalry, by a roundabout way, to the southern suburb, which he set in flames, and when the people turned back in terror from the besieged palace to rescue their wives and children from their burning homes, Hakam and the rest of the garrison fell on them in the rear. Attacked on both hands, the unfortunate rebels were cut to pieces; the grim Mutes rode through them, slashing them down by the hundred, and disregarding, if they understood, their prayers for mercy. Hakam's manœuvre saved the palace and the dynasty; and the insurrection was converted into a wholesale massacre.[12]

Yet in the moment of his triumph the Sultan stayed his hand; he did not press his victory to the last limits, but was content with ordering the destruction of the rebellious suburb and the exile of its inhabitants, who were forced to fly, some to Alexandria, to the number of fifteen thousand, besides women and children, whence they eventually crossed to Crete; others, eight thousand in all, to Fez, in Africa. The majority of the exiles were descendants of the old Spanish population, who had embraced Islam, but were glad of a pretext to assert their racial antipathy for the Arab rule. The chief offenders, the fakis, or theological students, however, were left unpunished, partly, no doubt, because many of them were Arabs, and partly in deference to their profession of orthodoxy. To one of their leaders, who was dragged before Hakam, and who told the Sultan, in the heat of his fanatical rage, that in hating his king he was obeying the voice of God, Hakam made the memorable reply: "He who commanded thee, as thou dost pretend, to hate me, commands me to pardon thee. Go and live, in God's protection!"