beyond the Pyrenees, while tyranny and extortion provoked frequent commotions at home. At length Abderrahman, as well to employ a restless people as to gratify his own ambition, collected a prodigious army, and burst into France. The cause of civilized society has never been exposed to equal danger, since the Athenians preserved it at Salamis. Charles Martel met him by Tours, and destroyed him and his army. To revenge this defeat was for awhile the great object of the Moors, and Christendom was still saved by the same hero. Dissensions broke out between the original conquerors, and the Moors who had flocked over from Africa: an army of Syrians was called in, and they soon became a third party. Meantime Cardonne.1. Pelayo and the Spaniards strengthened themselves in Asturias. Ferreras. Wherever they advanced they found a number of Christians ready to assist in recovering their country. Under Alonso the Morales. 13. Catholic, they became formidable, and then in their turn weakened themselves. His successor, Froyla, murdered one brother, and was himself murdered by another, who seized the throne. The insecure Usurper made himself vassal to the Moors, and his only wars were against the slaves in his own kingdom, who had risen upon their Christian masters.

136.

t. 4. p.60.

13. 3.

Bleda. 3. 8.

The revolution which established the Abbassides in Syria, erected another dynasty and a new empire in Spain. Abdoulrahman, one of the Ommiades, fled from the massacre of his family, and hid himself, with his child and his brother, in a forest beside the Euphrates. They were discovered, the boy was slain, the two A.D. 749. brethren rode into the river. One, allured by the promise of his pursuers to spare him, turned back from the dangerous passage, and was immediately murdered. Abdoulrahman swam on, and Cardonne. effected his escape. He got into Africa, and had found adherents there who promised to protect him against the Governor, when deputies came over from the Spanish Moors to invite him

1.181.

1. 196.

to the kingdom of Spain as his inheritance. His reign was a perpetual warfare against those who transferred their loyalty with the throne of the Caliphs, or against chiefs who fought for their own aggrandizement, and called it the cause of the Abbassides. Almanzor made one direct effort, and sent Ala with troops from Africa, and the whole weight of his authority, to destroy the last of a rival race. He was at Mecca when the head of Ala, salted and filled with camphor, was nailed against his palace door, and the sight made him rejoice that the sea rolled between Cardonne. him and his enemy. The Ommiade triumphed over every opposer; established his throne at Cordova, and left the unA.D. 787. disputed sovereignty of all the Spanish Moors to his son. The race of Abdoulrahman should not go without their fame. An astrologer predicted to his successor Haccham, a happy and glorious reign, but only of eight years. In the belief of this prediction he reigned with the wholesome fear of death before his eyes, and no act of injustice or cruelty is of him recorded. Two elder brethren, to whom he had been wisely preferred by his father, attempted to dethrone him: he subdued them, and then settled ample revenues upon these dangerous rivals, when they were at his mercy. Haccham's armies were filled by soldiers who loved him; and when a father died, the sons received his pay till they also were of an age to serve. The Christians resisted him with courage; but he pursued them into their mountains, and burnt the palace of their Kings, and so reduced them, that when a wealthy Moor bequeathed his treasures to ransom his countrymen who were in captivity among the Spaniards, none could be found to profit by the bequest. The Pyrenees did not bound his exploits; he completed the great Mosque at Cordova with the spoils of Narbonne. The liberality Cardonne.1. of this Caliph was as dangerous to the Christians as his arms. Of his body guard, which consisted of five thousand men, three thousand were renegados.

225-229.

Rod. Xim
Hist. Ar.

P. 38.

The reign of the second Haccham was more troubled. Always in arms either against the Leonese, or his own rebellious subjects, he was alike terrible to both. A revolt threw Toledo into the hands of the Christians, who were too feeble to keep the metropolis which they had thus recovered. Another mutiny of the citizens incensed Haccham, and the vengeance which he planned was in the spirit and upon the scale of Asiatic barbarity. Their fellow citizen Amrouz was made Governor; he lured the affections of the people, and tempted them to plot another rebellion in which he should be their leader; and he persuaded them that a citadel would be necessary for their defence. They built one, and within it, a palace for their new Chief. This citadel was designed to keep the people in obedience, and Amrouz made the workmen dig a pit secretly within the walls, deep and wide and long. When every thing was prepared, Haccham sent his son to Toledo, on some specious pretext. Amrouz entertained him and invited all who possessed either authority or influence in the town to a feast. As Rod. Xim. they entered, they were seized; the massacre lasted from morn- c. 22. 23. ing till mid-day, and the ready grave was filled with five thousand bodies. No provocation can palliate a crime like this; yet all 1. that his subjects complained of in Haccham, were his sloth, his excesses at table, and above all his love of wine. New mutinies excited him to new cruelty: meantime the Christians insulted his border. A female Moor as she was led away into captivity, called upon Haccham to deliver her. Her appeal was reported to him, and it roused his pride. He entered the Christian territories at the head of a victorious army, sought out the woman, and with his own hand broke her chains.

A second Abdoulrahman succeeded. He is called the Victorious, though he was more fortunate against his own rebellious subjects than against the Christians, who gained upon his fron

d

Hist. Arat.

Cardonne

I. 245.

Mariana. 7.

Cardonne 1.

255.

tier, or the Normans who plundered his coast. Mahommed, the next in succession, left thirty three sons; one of his forty four brethren broke the line of inheritance and seized his nephew's throne. The Usurper was the third Abdoulrahman, the most magnificent of the Moorish Kings of Spain. His history is like a tale of Eastern splendour, with an Eastern moral at the end. To gratify the vanity of a favourite slave, he built a town and called it after her name, Zehra, which signifies the ornament of the world. There were in its palace a thousand and fourteen columns of African and Spanish marble, nineteen from Italian quarries, and a hundred and forty beautiful enough to be presents from the Greek Emperor. The marble walls of the Hall of the Caliph were inlaid with gold; birds and beasts of gold, studded with jewels, spouted water into a marble bason in its centre; the bason was the work of the best Greek sculptors, and above it hung the great pearl which had been sent to Abdoulrahman by the Emperor Leon. The extent of the buildings may be imagined by the size of his seraglio, which contained six thousand three hundred persons. This was his favourite abode. After the chase, to which twelve thousand horsemen always accompanied him, he used to rest in a pavilion in the gardens; the pillars were of pure white marble, the floor of gold and steel and jewelry, and in the midst there was a fountain of quicksilver. Yet Abdoulrahman left a writing which contained this testimony against the vanity of the world. From the moment when I began to reign, I have recorded those days in which I enjoyed real and undisturbed pleasure: they amount to fourteen. Mortal man, consider what this world is, and what dependance is to be placed upon its enjoyments! Nothing seems wanting to my happiness;.. riches, honours, to say every thing, 'sovereign power. I am feared and esteemed by my contemporary princes, they envy my good fortune, they are jealous of

my glory, they solicit my friendship. Fifty years have I reigned, and in so long a course of time can count but fourteen days which have not been poisoned by some vexation.

Cardonne 1.

829.

The reign of his son Haccham was short and splendid and peaceful. He wanted to enlarge his palace at Zehra: the ground adjoining was the property of a poor woman, who would not for any price sell the inheritance of her fathers; the workmen took possession by force, and she went to the Cadi Ibn Bechir with her complaint. Ibn Bechir took a large sack, mounted his ass, and rode to the Caliph, whom he found sitting in a pavilion which had been built upon the place; he prostrated himself and asked permission to fill the sack with earth. Having obtained leave, he filled it, and then requested the Prince would help him to lift it up upon the ass. Haccham attempted, but found it too heavy. Prince, then said the Cadi, this is but a small part of that land whereof you have wrongfully deprived one of your subjects;.. how will you at the last judgment bear the burthen of the whole! He restored the ground, and gaye with it the buildings which had already been erected Cardonne 1.

there.

The Christians acquired strength during the disturbed reign of the second Haccham. A race of able kings succeeded Alfonso the Chaste. Ramiro, Ordoño, and another Alfonso, called the Great: then came a feebler line, and the Christians were divided. New states were erected in Navarre, in Catalonia, and in Aragon: if these sometimes rivalled the Kings of Leon they were more dangerous to the Moors, and the common cause was strengthened. But the separation of Castille from Leon, was a dismemberment, an actual loss of strength. The bond of unity once broken, jealousies and wars followed, and the example was mischievous. Galicia was ambitious of becoming independant like Castille, and frequent rebellions were the consequence.

349.