of any external show of supreme authority in the State. In 991 he abandoned the office and title of Hajib to his son, Abdul Malik. In 992 his seal took the place of that of the monarch on all documents of State. In 993 he assumed the royal cognomen of Mowayad. Two years later he arrogated to himself alone the title of Said; and in 996 he ventured a step further, and assumed the title of Malik Karim, or king.
But in 996 Almanzor was at length confronted by a rival. Sobeyra, the Navarrese Sultana, once his mistress, was now his deadly enemy, and she had determined that the queen, and not the minister, should reign supreme in the palace. Almanzor was to be destroyed. Hakam, a feeble and effeminate youth, was easily won over by the harem, who urged him to show the strength that he was so far from possessing, by espousing the cause of his mother against his guardian. The queen was assured of victory. The treasury was at the disposal of the conspirators. A military rival was secretly summoned from Africa. The minister was banished from the royal presence. The palace was already jubilant.
But the palace reckoned without Almanzor. Making his way into Hakam’s chamber, more charming, more persuasive, more resolute than ever, Almanzor prevailed upon the Caliph not only to restore him to his confidence, but to empower him, by a solemn instrument under the royal sign-manual, to assume the government of the kingdom. Sobeyra, defeated but unharmed by her victorious and generous rival, retired to a cloister; and Almanzor, contemptuously leaving to one of his lieutenants the task of vanquishing his subsidized rival in Africa, set forth upon the most memorable of all his many expeditions against Christian Spain (July 3, 997).
Making his way, at the head of an army, through Lusitania into far away Galicia, he took Corunna, and destroyed the great Christian church and city of Santiago de Compostella, the most sacred spot in all Spain, and sent the famous bells which had called so many Christian pilgrims to prayer and praise to be converted into lamps to illuminate the Moslem worshipers in the mosque at Cordova.
Five years later, in 1002, after an uncertain battle, Almanzor died in harness, if not actually in the ranks, bowed down by mortal disease, unhurt by the arm of the enemy. The relief of the Christians at his death was unspeakable; and is well expressed, says Mr. Poole, in the simple comment of the Monkish annalist, “In 1002 died Almanzor, and was buried in Hell.”
In force of character, in power of persuasion, in tact, in vigor, in that capacity for command that is only found in noble natures, Almanzor has no rival among the Regents of Spain. His rise is a romance; his power a marvel; his justice a proverb. He was a brilliant financier; a successful favorite; a liberal patron; a stern disciplinarian; a heaven-born courtier; an accomplished general; and no one of the great commanders of Spain, not Gonsalvo de Aguilar himself, was more uniformly successful in the field than this lawyer’s clerk of Cordova.
Hisham, in confinement at Az Zahra, was still the titular Caliph of the West, but Almanzor was succeeded as commander-in-chief and virtual ruler of the country by his favorite son, his companion-in-arms, and the hero of an African campaign, Abdul Malik Almudaffar, the Hajib of 991. But the glory of Cordova had departed. Abdul Malik indeed ruled in his father’s place for six years. But on his death, in 1008, he was succeeded by his half-brother, Abdur Rahman, who, as the son of a Christian princess, was mistrusted both by the palace and by the people; and the country became a prey to anarchy.