Part 3

Hakem was the first king to give regular pay to the army. He left a family of twenty boys and twenty girls, and the throne descended to one of his sons, Abd-er-Rahman II.

The fourth Omeyyad sultan was an encourager of poets, painters, and philosophers. Abu Meruan, the illustrious historian, lived in this reign, and Ziryāb, the distinguished musician, was a court favourite. When Ziryāb was on his way to the city of culture and the arts, his royal patron went out to receive him with honour and pomp. Being himself a poet and a passionate worshipper of music, Abd-er-Rahman II. was a true friend of all artists.

Ziryāb, the composer, was singularly versatile. We read that he invented a new process for making linen white, that he introduced asparagus into Andalusia, invented a crystal ware, and taught the use of leather beds.

It is interesting to learn that the harem of the second Abd-er-Rahman contained several cultured women. One of these was Tarūb, a favourite concubine, to whom the monarch addressed these lines:

‘When the sun rises every day to give us light, it reminds me of Tarūb. I am the happiest of mortals, since I am successful in love and prosperous in war.’

Another beauty of the court was Kalam, a woman of learning. She recited poetry and was gifted in music.

We may pass over the somewhat uneventful period of rule under Mohammed and Abdullah, and enter upon the reign of the illustrious Abd-er-Rahman III. (912-961), the greatest of the Omeyyads, and the most enlightened of the trio of monarchs bearing his name. This was the crowning, the most glorious, hour of Cordova’s splendour. The Moors were in possession of almost the whole of Spain. Draw a line on the map of the country from the north-eastern limit of the Pyrenees to Coimbra, north of Lisbon, and you will divide the region of the conquered Iberians of the Biscayan mountains from the kingdom of the Mohammedans. All the districts below the line were governed by the Moors. In 1360 only Granada remained as the remnant of Moorish might in Spain.

Abd-er-Rahman III. lived in a gorgeous palace in the northern quarter of Cordova. This was but one of the sumptuous houses of the city in the height of its grandeur, for, on the authority of several chroniclers, there were fifty thousand palaces in Cordova, besides three hundred mosques. One of these palaces was known as Damascus; others were called the Palace of the Garden, the Palace of Contentment, and the Palace of Flowers. The glitter of Cordova shone afar throughout the Moslem world. Ibn Said, the historian, wrote a full description of ‘the beauties of the kingdom of Cordova,’ containing information concerning the population, industries, and buildings of the fair and opulent city. The water from the aqueduct was collected in a large reservoir, in which stood the image of a lion, covered with gold, and having jewels for the eyes. The stream poured in at the hind part of the lion, and gushed from the mouth, and the overflow ran to the Guadalquivir.

A palace upon arches was built over the river. Dimascus, the chief palace, had roofs supported by marble columns, and dazzling floors of mosaics. Walls surrounded the city, which was approached by beautiful gates, bearing such names as Bab Koriah (the Gate of Coria), Bábu-el-Tamen (the Gate of the Gardens), and Bábu-el-Jemi (the Gate of the Great Mosque).

The wise, the studious, and those skilled in the arts and the crafts flocked to Cordova during the reign of Abd-er-Rahman III. Surrounded by the learned in his splendid palace, the great Khalif lived in an atmosphere of thought and beauty. Literary men came nightly to recite their stories to the sultan and his nobles, musicians played their compositions, and masters of science expounded their theories and discoveries.

Amid the counsels of the intellectual and the prudent Abd-er-Rahman ruled with discretion, justice, and tolerance; Spain had reached the height of its civilisation. The land was made to yield of its richest; fruits and flowers of the tropics flourished; the steeds of Arabia were bred in the vales around the city; workers in clay, wood, and metals plied their crafts with loving industry; and the world wondered at this spectacle of might, culture, and peace.

It was Abd-er-Rahman III. who caused the building of Medinat-Ez-Zahra, a city situated at a distance of four miles and a third from Cordova. This marvellous suburb contained markets, taverns, baths, and institutions of learning. A stupendous mosque was erected. El-Makkari speaks of the magnificent palace, wherein the Khalif was served by an army of servants; the gardens, and the fishponds teeming with well-fed fish, who were regaled with a daily allowance of twelve thousand loaves of bread.

Forty years were spent in the making of Ez-Zahra. Ten thousand workmen and three thousand horses and mules were employed in the labour. The columns came from Carthage, Rome, and Constantinople; the walls and roof of the palace were of marble adorned with gold.

Upon viewing the majestic city, a Moorish writer cried: ‘Praise be to God Most High for allowing His humble creatures to design and build such enchanting palaces as this, and who permitted them to inhabit them as a sort of recompence in this world, and in order that the faithful might be encouraged to follow the path of virtue, by the reflection that, delightful as were these pleasures, they were still far below those reserved for the true believer in the Celestial Paradise.’

When the messengers of Constantine came to Ez-Zahra, they were awed and made speechless by the majestic grandeur of the palace. Alas! to-day not a vestige of Medinat-Ez-Zahra survives. The ruthless Berbers razed the fair city to the ground in 1010, leaving not a stone to remind the beholder of its past glory.

The last Abd-er-Rahman possessed a love of ceremony and splendour. He built palaces, mosques, and halls to appease this passion of ostentation; and we read that when potentates journeyed to seek his presence, he caused elaborate buildings to be erected for their nightly reception along the route. In reading of the Mezquita, we shall see how much of his time and wealth were devoted to improving and embellishing the great structure.

Upon the city of Ez-Zahra Abd-er-Rahman spent huge sums from the treasury. It was built to please one of his concubines, after whom it was named, and a statue of the fair favourite was carved in relief over the chief gateway. The palaces were of massive plan and beautiful design. Dark hills formed the background to the city, and referring to the situation Ez-Zahra said: ‘See, O master, how beautiful this girl looks in the arms of yonder Ethiopian.’ The sombre hills were, however, an eyesore to Abd-er-Rahman, and he proposed to remove them; but this feat of engineering was not carried out, and to relieve the blackness of the slopes the Sultan caused them to be planted with fig and almond trees.

Hakem II., who succeeded Abd-er-Rahman, was a just ruler, distinguished for his humility. He was a zealous ascetic, and he passed laws condemning the use of wine. To enforce abstinence from the juice of the grape, he rooted up the vineyards. We shall see later how this Khalif devoted himself to enriching the Mezquita.

We have now reached the reign of the powerful Almanzor, or Almansur, a romantic and ambitious personage, who came to Cordova as a poor student. During the days of his poverty he made a scanty livelihood by writing letters, and became the protégé of Aurora, mother of Hisham II. After attaining this post, he appears to have made quick advance towards preferment, for he was soon appointed kadi of a town, and obtained a position as a civil servant in the city of Seville. Returning to Cordova, he paid homage to his patroness Aurora, and gave her costly gifts. His next appointment was as master of the mint, and we learn that he built himself a mansion of silver.

Almanzor’s career was a fight for power. He won general esteem by his prowess as a soldier, and in the wars with the Christians he triumphed in fifty-six battles. Even when stricken by illness, Almanzor went to the field in a litter, and directed the movements of his force in their attacks on the infidels. Always scheming for authority, he contrived to usurp rule in Andalusia. The attainment of his desire did not yield him complete felicity, for he once wept at the thought that war would one day destroy his sway and level his magnificent palace.

Under Almanzor Cordova grew in might and was still regarded as the wonder of the Moslem world. The Vizier was a man of culture, a clever diplomatist, and a valorous soldier. Conde says that in battle ‘he resembled a raging panther, leaping on the prey and thirsting for blood.’ In times of peace he held poetical tournaments, rewarding the victorious poets with heavy prizes of money for their verses. Almanzor was the founder of Ez-Zahirah, a town which grew up in the vicinity of Ez-Zahra. It contained a resplendent palace, which was two years in the building. Here the monarch maintained a court, and received foreign potentates, with much ceremony and parade of wealth.

Cordova saw the first signs of impending decadence when Almanzor died, and his son Muzaffar came in to rule. Under Almanzor the glory of the city reached its culmination. ‘Do not make war on these people, for by the Lord we have seen the earth yielding them its hidden treasures,’ was the counsel of the Sclavonian ambassadors, after they had sojourned in Cordova, and seen the wonders and riches of Ez-Zahra and Ez-Zahirah displayed before their dazzled eyes. Vast were the resources and the armaments of these three marvellous cities, and famous for valour were their sons. Almanzor forged thousands of blades and spears, and the yield of his shield manufactory was twelve thousand in one year.

And yet power, pomp, learning and the arts--all decayed with the waning of the great Omeyyad dynasty. The ripe fruit of this fine civilisation seems to have rotted rapidly. Such social science as the Moors possessed could not save it from destruction; the arts of war, in which the makers of Kordhobah were so excellent, failed against the inexorable march of decadence. Boastful imperialism and luxury ate out the heart of the city, till it could not withstand the savage Berber mob. Complete disorder prevailed, palaces were wrecked, mosques were pillaged, treasure looted, gardens laid waste, and the largest library in the world was ransacked and plundered.

We can scarcely form a conception of all the beauteous edifices, the noble works of artist and craftsman, that perished in this last upheaval. Almanzor’s palace was ruthlessly burned to the ground. The city claimed to be an independent republic. Robbers swarmed in the holy fanes, and murderers rushed red-handed through the streets.

In A.D. 1010 the Berbers attacked Ez-Zahra, and killed its defenders with savage ferocity. Even within the mosque the fugitive citizens were not safe from the swords of the invading barbarians. Led by Ibn Hishaim Ibn Abd-l-Jabbar, the rebels swooped upon Cordova. The glorious art treasures of Ez-Zahirah were seized by the troops, and the mansions were destroyed by fire. Baghdad and other towns of the east became the storehouses of the jewels, plate, books, and pictures which were stolen from Cordova; and the uncultured horde came into possession under the leadership of Suleyman. Only vestiges of Cordova’s pristine grandeur survived this period of frenzied rapine.

Lamentable was the fall of this centre of wisdom, virtue, refinement, and the arts. Nothing could restore its majesty and pre-eminence. Misruled by discordant factions, Cordova lingered moribund, a sad spectacle of shattered might. It has never regained a tithe of its former supremacy. The drowsy city lives on its memories of greatness.

In 1235 Ferdinand III.--the doughty Christian warrior San Fernando--took the city at the point of the sword, and reclaimed it from the alien heretic.

Spain rejoiced at this capture of the capital of Moorish power. It was a triumph for the soldiers of the Cross. Most of the vanquished Cordovans took refuge in Granada; the ‘reconciled’ sullenly accepted the conditions imposed upon them, and remained in the city. Such was the downfall of the Khalifs. The Christians established rule in the despoiled capital; the mosque was purified from its taint of the Moslem, and dedicated to the worship of God and the Virgin, and one by one the hundreds of baths fell into disuse, for cleanliness was not a canon of the victorious faith.

The coming of San Fernando only hastened the process of disruption in Cordova. War was the chief business of the Spaniard at this age, and handicraft was despised as something unworthy of a true Castilian _caballero_. All the possibilities of reconstruction and restoration were neglected by the Christians, who were more concerned with expelling the Moors and shattering every relic of their rule, than in making reasonable use of the resources and the crafts which they had developed and brought to perfection. The remnant of the Moors still remained the designers, craft-workers, and agriculturists, but their arts and their husbandry steadily declined. No great and beautiful buildings were reared on the ashes of Cordova, excepting the Christian additions to the Mezquita, which was consecrated in the name of the Vírgen de la Asuncíon.

The militarist Spaniards had no time to devote to trade, the cultivation of the vegas, and the extension of learning. Buildings which had been the joy of the Moors were permitted to crumble, or were pulled down to supply material for the erection of squalid dwellings. Grim ruin descended upon fair Cordova; melancholy decay succeeded its long era of growth and prosperity. The admirable irrigation system, which had made the meadows lush and the land fecund, was left unused, and the vineyards and plots were neglected. Briars and weeds gained supremacy in the fertile valley; the earth became impoverished and barren. The beautiful horses of Arab breed, which were reared by the Moors, deteriorated in stamina and grace, and degenerate cattle roamed the plains by the Guadalquivir. Forests planted by the makers of Cordova were felled; the country was rendered bare of foliage and shade.

In the seventeenth century the population of the city had been reduced to about seventy thousand inhabitants, and the number of its residents steadily dwindled after the expulsion of the Moors. There are now about fifty thousand people in Cordova. In the tenth century three hundred thousand persons dwelt in the city and its surroundings.

The Mezquita, the bridge, the mosque of Almanzor and the ruins of the Alcazar stand as eloquent examples of the Cordova of Almanzor: not a stone survives of the luxurious palaces, whose names suggest Oriental splendour and the joy of life. We can but imagine the charm of the Palace of Contentment and the Palace of the Diadem, and the loveliness of the scented gardens that delighted sultans and sultanas, and the sages and the poets of the far-famed ‘Bride of Andalusia.’

Hushed is the voice of the muezzin: no longer can men sit entranced at the strains of the musicians, or listen to the recitals of the doctors and the poets. But the same notes of the nightingale drift on the perfumed breeze of evening, and the hawks still sail and soar above the minaret. And in the Court of Oranges, girls of erect and Moorish mien bear Oriental pitchers on their heads, as they resort to the fountain for water; while through the open door of the Mezquita one may scent the incense, and see the tangled vista of Arabic arches; or, standing upon the many-arched bridge, watch the selfsame umber river which legions upon legions of dusky warriors crossed to victory.

Thus Cordova, though in a sense dead, still lives and speaks. Its stones are vividly reminiscent of the days of the Moors; the atmosphere is mysteriously impressive, and the features of its natives have still the Arab cast, while in their customs and their speech traces of the Moor survive.

With the triumph of San Fernando came the steady disintegration of the high civilisation of Cordova, and its history from the day of victory onwards is one both mournful and instructive. The expulsion of the Arab artisans was an error of policy which the more intelligent Cordovese quickly recognised, for soon after the restoration of the city into the hands of the Spanish sovereigns, many of the inhabitants proposed to request the king to permit six per cent. of the Moors to remain in Cordova. This petition was, however, lightly regarded by the Governor, and it does not appear to have come under the attention of Ferdinand. Later on, the citizens, finding that trade was rapidly declining, begged that a few aged Moors might be allowed to stay in the city, and to ply their trade of harness-makers.

The neglect of the staple industries of Cordova after the Christian reconstruction is an object-lesson upon the paralysis of the arts and crafts which characterises the Castilian influence during this period. It seems almost incredible that the Spaniards had forgotten the art of harness-making, or that the natives of Cordova refused to soil their fingers in any sort of labour. But what other inferences can be drawn from the proposed petitions that a small number of the Moriscos might be retained as mechanics? It appears evident that the only occupations deemed fitting for an Andalusian of that day were ecclesiastic or military. There was only the choice between the church and the army.

An observant traveller, the Chevalier de Bourgoanne, who made a tour of Spain in 1797, writes of the melancholy decay of Cordova. ‘In so fine a climate,’ says the Chevalier, ‘in midst of so many sources of prosperity, it (Cordova) contains no more than 35,000 inhabitants. Formerly celebrated for its manufactories of silks, fine cloths, etc., it has now no other industrious occupations but a few manufactories of ribbons, galoons, hats and baize.’

IV

THE BUILDING OF THE MOSQUE

When Abd-er-Rahman I. seized upon the citadel of the Gothic Christian kings, he found the Cordovese split up into various sects, such as the Gnostics, Priscillianists, Donatists, and Luciferians. These cults were, however, united in their detestation of the new creed of the East, which the victors sought to impose upon them. It is quite clear from the records of the more impartial Spanish historians, that the Sultan was a man of tolerant mould and a respecter of justice. His ambition was to erect a temple, which would rival in magnificence those of Baghdad, Jerusalem, and Damascus, and approach in sanctity to the fane of Mecca itself.

The Christian church in Cordova stood upon the site of the former Roman religious edifice dedicated to Janus, and upon this situation Abd-er-Rahman desired to rear his great mosque. Autocrat though he was, the monarch strove to maintain the conditions upon which the inhabitants had surrendered. He might have broken faith, and annexed the Christian building and the ground upon which it stood. But he honourably offered to buy the church and the plot from the conquered people. The negotiations of purchase were placed in the hands of the Sultan’s favourite secretary, Umeya Ibn Yezid.

At first the Christians refused to sell their cherished basilica, which had been divided into a temple of the faith of Christ and a fane for the worship of Allah. Here, in separate portions of the building, the conquerors and the conquered murmured their prayers and repeated their praises to their deities. How the Cordovese were induced to relinquish the church cannot be explained by any historical evidence that we are able to obtain from the writings of Arabians and Spaniards. Some authors have suggested that the Christians of Cordova were disheartened by adversity and the assaults of Islam upon their creed, and that they yielded to the suasion and counsels of Umeya Ibn Yezid, and sold their tabernacle to the invaders. At any rate it is manifest that Abd-er-Rahman won in the end, and that he was able to forward his project without showing violence to the natives of Cordova.

No doubt the Christians preferred to worship in their own buildings rather than to share the basilica with the infidels, and this preference may have influenced their spiritual leaders in meeting the request of the sultan and his agent. Under the terms of transference, the Cordovese were permitted to reconstruct the edifice formerly dedicated to St. Faustus, St. Januarius, and St. Marcellus, three martyrs whom they deeply revered. Immediately upon the conveyance of the church and its site to Abd-er-Rahman, the work of erecting the gorgeous mosque was begun with much enthusiasm and at the expenditure of huge sums of money. The Khalif was rich. Besides the treasure wrested from the Goths during the wars, he extracted a tithe upon the produce of the land and on manufactures. A tax was also laid upon every Christian and Jew in Andalusia. Beyond this, the Moorish kings were greatly enriched by the acquisition of the valuable mines of Spain, the quarries of marble, and other sources of wealth. From these revenues Abd-er-Rahman and his successors, Hisham, Abd-er-Rahman II., the greatest of the dynasty and the third of the line--and lastly, the extravagant Al-manzor--lavished heavy sums upon the designing, construction, and costly adornment of the Mosque.

The power of the first Khalif of Cordova was supreme and undisputed. He was the sole spiritual and temporal head of the people, ‘the Commander of the Faithful.’ Subservient to him were the _walis_ who ruled in the provinces. Abd-er-Rahman’s despotism made upon the whole for charity, tolerance, and justice. The accounts of his persecutions have been coloured by pious historians, and bear the stamp of a natural hostility to the conqueror and his religion. One or two of the more accurate Spanish writers assert that, at the most, only forty persons were martyred in Cordova under the Omeyyad sway; and, according to Morales, these victims sought persecution.

To court sufferings at the hands of the Moors was deemed a noble virtue in the breast of the devout Christians. We may recall the story of Santa Teresa of Avila, who, as a child, wandered from the city with her little brother to seek persecution in the country of the infidels. Whatever may be charged against the Khalifs of the family of Omeyya, it cannot be asserted that their policy after the conquest was one of tyrannous subjugation. They undoubtedly levied taxes and imposts upon the Goths, and confiscated their lands, after a campaign of destruction and aggression; but as victors they displayed magnanimity, and sought to heal the wounded spirit of the vanquished.

The attitude of Abd-er-Rahman I. towards the Christian population of Cordova was, therefore, clement and conciliatory. Under his sovereignty there dawned an age of prosperity and advancement. The work of building the resplendent Mezquita employed thousands of artisans and labourers. This vast undertaking led to the development of all the resources of the district. Durable stone and beautifully veined marbles were quarried from the Sierra Morena and the surrounding regions of the city. Metals of various kinds were dug from the soil, and factories sprang up in Cordova amid the stir and bustle of an awakened industrial energy. A famous Syrian architect made the plans for the Mosque. Leaving his suburban dwelling, the Khalif came to reside in the city, so that he might personally superintend the operations, and offer proposals for the improvement of the designs. We are told that Abd-er-Rahman moved about among the workers, directing them during several hours of every day. The monarch was growing old. It was the longing of his heart to witness the final achievement of his great scheme before death overtook him.