The Moors in Spain

by Stanley Lane-Poole

blast of that dread horn,

On Fontarabian echoes borne,

reached even to King Charles's ear as he lay encamped and ignorant of the disaster that had befallen the rear-guard eight miles away. The king would have hastened to answer the forlorn blast, that seemed to tell of a tragedy; but a traitor told him that Roland was gone a-hunting, and Charlemagne was persuaded not to answer the summons of his faithful paladin; who, after prayer and confession, gave up the ghost. Then Baldwin, another of the peers of France, came running to the king and told him of what had befallen the rear of his army, and the death of Roland and Oliver. Whereupon the king and all his army turned and marched back to Roncesvalles, where the ground was strewn with dead, and Charles himself was the first to descry the body of the hero, lying in the form of a cross, with his horn and broken sword beside him. Then did Great Charles lament over him with bitter sighs and sobs, wringing his hands and tearing his beard, and crying, "O right arm of thy Sovereign's body, honour of the Franks, sword of justice, inflexible spear, inviolable breastplate, shield of safety, noble defender of the Christians, scourge of the Saracens, a wall to the clergy, the widow's and orphan's friend, just and faithful in judgment! Renowned Count of the Franks, valiant captain of our armies, why did I leave thee here to perish? How can I behold thee dead, and not die with thee? Why hast thou left me sorrowful and alone, a poor miserable king? But thou art exalted to the kingdom of heaven, and dost enjoy the company of angels and martyrs!" Thus did Charles mourn for Roland to the last day of his life. On the spot where he died the army rested, and the body was embalmed with balsam, aloes, and myrrh. The whole army of the Franks watched by it that night, honouring the corse with hymns and songs, and lighting fires on the mountains round about. Then they took him with them, and buried him right royally. Thus ended the fatal day—

When Roland brave and Oliver,

And every paladin and peer,

On Roncesvalles died.

No action of so small importance has ever been made the theme of so many heroic legends and songs. It is the Thermopylæ of the Pyrenees, with none of the glory or the significance, but all the glamour, of its prototype.

III.
THE PEOPLE OF ANDALUSIA.

THE victory of Charles Martel, in 733, had set a bound to the Saracens' invasion of Europe; they no longer thought of further conquest, but turned to the work of consolidating the kingdom they had acquired. After the brief and disastrous incursion of Charlemagne, they were left in almost undisturbed possession of their new territory for a period of three hundred years. It is true the descendants of the expelled Goths still held out in stubborn independence in the mountainous districts of the north, and from time to time recovered a portion of their ancient dominion; but these inroads, while they gave some trouble, did not materially endanger the domination of the Moors over the greater part of Spain until the eleventh century. The conquerors accepted the independence of the northern provinces as an inevitable evil, which would cost more blood to remove than the feat was worth; and leaving Galicia, Leon, Castile, and the Biscayan provinces to the Christians, they contented themselves with the better part of the land: the Christians might enjoy the dreary wastes and rocky defiles of the north, provided they did not interfere with the Moors' enjoyment of the warm and fertile provinces of the south and east. From the end of the eighth century, when the Moorish boundaries took a tolerably final shape, to the time of the advance of the Christian kingdoms in the eleventh century, the division between the Christian north and the Moslem south may be roughly placed at the great range of mountains called the Sierra de Guadarrama, which runs in a north-easterly direction from Coimbra in Portugal to Zaragoza, from whence the Ebro may be taken as a rough boundary. The Moors thus enjoyed the fertile valleys of the Tagus, the Guadiana, and the Guadalquivir—the very name of which bears witness to its Arab owners, for Guadalquivir is a corruption of the Arabic Wady-l-kebīr, or the "Great River"—besides possessing the famous cities of Andalusia, the wealth and commerce and climatic advantages of which had been celebrated from Roman times. The division was a natural one; the two parts have been distinguished geographically from time immemorial, on account of their climatic differences. The north is bleak and exposed to biting winds, subject to heavy rains and intense cold; a good pasturage country, but in most parts ill to cultivate. The south, while tormented by the hot winds that blow over from Africa, is genial, well watered, and capable of high cultivation. A great plateau divides the two, and though this fell chiefly on the Moorish side, it was to some extent debatable land and insecurely held. Its chilly heights rendered it distasteful to lovers of sunshine like the Moors, and they confided it chiefly to the care of the Berber tribes who had first come over with Tārik, and who were always held in poor estimation by the true Arabs who reaped the fruits of the conquest.

In the two-thirds of the peninsula thus marked off by nature for their habitation, which the Arabs always called "Andalus," and we shall call Andalusia, to distinguish it from the entire peninsula, the Moors organized that wonderful kingdom of Cordova which was the marvel of the Middle Ages, and which, when all Europe was plunged in barbaric ignorance and strife, alone held the torch of learning and civilization bright and shining before the Western world. It must not be supposed that the Moors, like the barbarian hordes who preceded them, brought desolation and tyranny in their wake. On the contrary, never was Andalusia so mildly, justly, and wisely governed as by her Arab conquerors. Where they got their talent for administration it is hard to say, for they came almost direct from their Arabian deserts, and the rapid tide of victories had left them little leisure to acquire the art of managing foreign nations. Some of their counsellors were Greeks and Spaniards, but this does not explain the problem; for these same counsellors were unable to produce similar results elsewhere, and all the administrative talent of Spain had not sufficed to make the Gothic domination tolerable to its subjects. Under the Moors, on the other hand, the people were on the whole contented—as contented as any people can be whose rulers are of a separate race and creed,—and far better pleased than they had been when their sovereigns belonged to the same religion as that which they nominally professed. Religion was, indeed, the smallest difficulty which the Moors had to contend with at the outset, though it became troublesome afterwards. The Spaniards were as much pagan as Christian; the new creed promulgated by Constantine had made little impression among the general mass of the population, who were still predominantly Roman. What they wanted was, not a creed, but the power to live their lives in peace and prosperity. This their Moorish masters gave them.