Read the book: «Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 342, April, 1844», page 7

The reign of Al-hakem was the Augustan age of Andalusian literature; and besides the numerous learned men whom the fame of his father's and his own liberality, with the security of their rule, had attracted to Spain from other regions of Islam, we find in the pages of Al-Makkari an extensive list of native authors, principally in the departments of poetry, history, and philology, who are said to be "a few only of the most eminent who flourished during this reign"—but none of their names, however noted in their own day, are known in modern Europe. Nor was the gentler sex, as is usually the case in the lands of Islam, excluded from the general taste for letters; and one of our author's chapters is almost entirely filled with a catalogue of the poetesses who adorned Andalus at this and other periods of its history. One of these, Mariam or Mary, the daughter of Abu-Yakub Al-ansari, who rose into celebrity in the latter years of Al-hakem, appears to have been one of the earliest bas-bleus on record. Independent of her poetical talents, she gave lectures at her residence at Seville "in rhetoric and literature; which, united to her piety, virtue, and amiable disposition, gained her the affection of her sex, and procured her many pupils: she lived to old age, and died after the 400th year of the Hejra," (A.D. 1010.) The favourite study of the Moslems, the divinity and law of the Koran, was cultivated with especial zeal under a monarch who was himself a rigid observer of its ordinances; and various anecdotes are related by Al-Makkari of the extraordinary deference paid by Al-hakem to the eminent theologians who frequented his court. The Khalif himself "attended public worship every Friday, and distributed alms to the poor; he laid out large sums in the construction of mosques, hospitals, and colleges for youth;²¹ and being himself very strict in the observance of his religious duties, he enforced the precepts of the Sunnah (tradition) throughout his dominions." With this view, severe edicts were directed against the use of wine, which had become prevalent among the Andalusian Moslems; and Al-hakem was with difficulty restrained, by representations of the ruin which would be thus brought on the cultivators, from ordering the destruction of all the vines in his dominions. But the reign of this excellent and enlightened prince lasted only fifteen years; and at his death, (Sept. 976,) which was caused by the same malady that had proved fatal to his father, the glory of the house of Umeyyah expired.

The evils of a minority had never yet been experienced in the succession of the Umeyyan princes, all of whom had ascended the throne at a mature age, and with some experience of administration from their previous recognition as heir. But Hisham II., (surnamed Al-muyyed-billah, the assisted by God,) the only son of Al-hakem, was but nine years old at the time of his father's decease; and for some time the government was directed in his name by the Hajib, Jafar Al-Mushafi; but the influence of the queen-mother erelong succeeded in displacing this faithful minister, in favour of Mohammed Ibn Abu Amir, who then held the post of sahib-ush-shortah, or captain of the guard. This remarkable personage (better known in history by his surname of Al-mansur) was the son of a religious devotee, and his condition in early life was so humble, that he supported himself as a public letter-writer in the streets of Cordova; but an accident having introduced him into the palace, he so skilfully wound his way among the intigues of the court, as to attain the highest place next the throne. But even this dignity was far from satisfying his ambition. Under various pretexts he destroyed or drove into exile, within a few years, all the princes of the blood, and others whose influence or station might have endangered the success of his projects, and concentrated in his own hands all the powers of the state; while the khalif, secluded from public view within his palace, was as completely a puppet in the hands of his all-powerful minister, as the khalifs of Bagdad at the same period in those of the Emirs-al-Omrah. Secure of the support of the soldiery, whose affections he had gained by his liberality, Al-mansur so little affected to disguise his assumption of supremacy, that he ordered his own name to be struck on the coin, and repeated in the public prayers, along with that of Hisham, thus arrogating to himself a share in the two most inalienable prerogatives of sovereignty. His robes were made of a peculiar fashion and stuff appropriated to royalty; he received embassies seated on the throne, and declared peace and war in his own name. To such utter helplessness was the khalif reduced,²² that he was unable even to oppose the removal of the royal treasure fiom Cordova to a fortified palace which Al-mansur had built for his residence, not far from Az-zahra, and had named, as if in mockery, Az-zahirah;—and the Hajib was at one time obliged to quiet the murmurs of the populace, who doubted whether their sovereign was still in existence, by leading him in procession through the streets of the capital; "and the eyes of the people feasted on what had been so long concealed from them."

But this daring usurpation was in part redeemed by qualities in the usurper worthy of a king. Though the bigotry of Al-masur led him to order the destruction of those volumes in the library of Al-hakem which treated of philosophy and the abstruse sciences, on the ground that such studies tended to irreligion, he was yet liberal to the learned men who visited his court at Az-zahirah, where he resided in royal splendour during the intervals of his campaigns; and he endeared hinself to the people, by his generosity, his rigid justice, and the strict control which he enforced over his subordinate officers. But it was on his fervent zeal for the cause of Islam, and his martial exploits against the Christians, (whence his surname of Al-mansur, or the Victorious, was derived,) that his fame and popularity chiefly rested. The martial spirit of the Spanish Moslems appears, from various anecdotes related by Al-Makkari, to have suffered great deterioration from the progress of luxury and decay of discipline; but the armies led by Al-mansur were mainly recruited from the fiery tribes of Barbary, and strengthened by numerous Christian slaves or Mamlukes, trained to serve their captors in arms against their own countrymen. With forces thus constituted, did Al-mansur, in whom once more shone forth the spirit of the Arab conquerors of past times, invade the Christian territories in each spring and autumn for twenty-six successive years, carrying the Moslem arms in triumph even to the shores of the "Green Sea," (Atlantic Ocean,) and into regions which Tarik and Musa had never reached. Astorga and Leon, in spite of the efforts of Bermudo II. to save his capital, were taken and razed to the ground in 983. Barcelona only escaped the same fate in the following year by submission and tribute; but the crowning glory of Al-mansur's achievements in the al-jahid or holy war, was the capture, in 997, Santiago, the shrine and sepulchre of the patron saint of Spain. "No Moslem general had ever penetrated as far as that city, which is in an inaccessible position in the most remote part of Galicia, and is a sanctuary regarded by the Christians with veneration equal to that which the Moslems entertain for the Kaaba,"—but Al-mansur, supplied with provisions from a fleet which accompanied his march along the coast of Portugal, forced his way through the Galician defiles, and occupied the holy city without opposition—all the inhabitants having fled, according to Ibn Hayyan, with the exception of an old monk who tended the tomb. The city and cathedral were leveled with the ground; the shrine alone was left untouched in the midst of the ruins, from the belief of the Moslems that St James was the brother of the Messiah—and the church-bells were conveyed on the shoulders of the captives to Cordova, where they were suspended as lamps in the great mosque, to commemorate the triumph of Islam in the principal seat of Christian worship and pilgrimage.

Such was the depression produced among the Christians by these repeated disasters, that, if we may believe Al-Makkari, "one of Al-mansur's soldiers having left his banner fixed in the earth on a mountain before a Christian town, the garrison dared not come out for several days after the retreat of the Moslem army, not knowing what troops might be behind it." The pressing sense of common danger, at length extinguished ("for the first time perhaps," as Conde remarks) the feuds of the Christian princes; and in the spring of 1002 the united forces of the Count of Castile, Sancho the Great of Navarre, and the King of Leon, confronted the Moslem host at Kalat-an-nosor,²³ (the Castle of the Eagles,) on the frontiers of Old Castile. The mighty conflict which ensued is very briefly dismissed by Al-Makkari—"Al-mansur attacked and defeated them with great loss"—but a far different account is given by the Christian chroniclers, who represent the Moslems as only saved from a total overthrow by the approach of night. It seems, in truth, to have been nearly a drawn battle, with immense carnage on both sides; but the advantage was decidedly with the Christians, who retained possession of the field; while Al-mansur, weakened by the loss of great numbers of his best men and officers, abandoned his camp, and retreated the next day across the Douro. In all his fifty-two campaigns he is said never before to have been defeated; and the chagrin occasioned by this severe reverse, joined to a malady under which he was previously suffering, ended his life shortly after²⁴ at Medinah-Selim, (Medinaceli.) He was buried by his sons in the same place; the dust which had adhered to his garments in his campaigns against the Christians, and which had been carefully preserved for the purpose, being placed in the tomb with the corpse—a practice not unusual at the funeral of a celebrated warrior. "This enlightened and never-vanquished Hajib"—says Al-Makkali, with whom Al-mansur is a favourite hero—"used continually to ask God to permit him to die in his service and in war against the infidels, and thus his desire was granted;... and after his death, the Mohammedan empire in Andalus began to show visible signs of decay."

Al-mansur had a worthy successor in his son Abdul-malek, who at once received the appointment of Hajib from the passive Khalif:—but on his death in 1008, the post was assumed by his brother Abdurrahman, popularly known as Shanjul, a Berber word signifying madman—a surname which he had earned by his habits of low vice and intemperance. Scarcely had he entered upon office, when, not contented with exercising sovereign authority, like his father and brother, under an appearance of delegation from the Khalif, he persuaded or compelled the feeble Hisham, who had no male issue, to appoint him Wali-al-ahd, or heir-presumptive—the deed of nomination is given at length by Al-Makkari, and is a curious specimen of a state-paper. But this transfer was viewed with deep indignation by the people of Cordova, who were warmly attached to the line of their ancient princes; and their discontent being fomented by the members of the Umeyyan family, they rose in furious revolt during the absence of the Hajib on the Galician frontiers, deposed Hisham, and raised to the throne Mohammed-Al-muhdi, a great-grandson of Abdurrahman III. Abdurrahman, returning in haste to quell the insurrection, found himself deserted by his army, and was put to death with most of his family and principal adherents; and the power of the Amirites vanished in a day like the remembrance of dream. But the sceptre which had thus been struck from their grasp, found no other hand strong enough to seize it; and from the first deposition of Hisham II. in 1009, to the final dissolution of the monarchy on the abdication of Hisham III. in 1031, the whole of Moslem Spain presented a frightful scene of anarchy and civil war. Besides the imbecile Hisham, who was at least once released and restored to the throne, and was personated by more than one pretender, the royal title was assumed, within twenty years by not fewer than six princes of the house of Umeyyah, and by three of a rival race—a branch of the Edrisites called Beni-Hammud, who endeavoured in the general confusion to assert their claims as descendants of the Khalif Ali. The aid of the Christians was called in by more than one faction; and Cordova was stormed and sacked after a long siege in 1013, by the African troops who followed the standard of Soliman Ab-muhdi, one of the Umeyyan competitors. The palaces of Az-zahra and Az-zahirah were utterly destroyed; the remains of Hakem's library, with the treasures amassed by former sovereigns, were either plundered or dispersed; nor did the ancient capital of Audalus, no more the seat of the Khalifate, ever recover its former grandeur. The provincial walis, many of whom owed their appointments to the Hajibs of the house of Amir, and were disaffected to the Beni-Umeyyah, every where threw off their allegiance and assumed independence, till only the districts in its immediate vicinity remained attached to Cordova, which was still considered the seat of the Mohammedan empire. The last Umeyyan prince who ruled there was a grandson of the great Abdurrahman, named Hisham Al-Mutadd; whom the inhabitants, after expelling the troops of the Beni-Hammud in 1027, invited to ascend the throne of his ancestors. "He was a mild and enlightened prince and possessed many brilliant qualities; but notwithstanding this, the volatile and degenerate citizens of Cordova grew discontented with him, and he was deposed by the army in 422, (A.D. 1031.) He left the capital and retired to Lerida, where he died in 428, (A.D. 1036.) He was the last member of that illustrious dynasty which had ruled over Andalus and a great portion of Africa for two hundred and eighty-four years, counting from the accession of Abdurrahman I., surnamed Ab-dakhel, in 138, (A.D. 756.) There is no God but God! He is the Almighty!"

The fall of the Umeyyan khalifate closes the first of the two brilliant periods which illustrate the Arab history of Spain. The uninterrupted hereditary succession for ten generations, and the long average duration of the reign of each monarch, from the arrival in Spain of Abdurrahman I. in 756, to the death or disappearance of Hisham II. in 1009, are without a parallel it any other Moslem dynasty, with the single exception of the Ottoman line; and though, on pursuing the comparison, the Umeyyan princes cannot vie with the last-named race in extent of conquest and splendour of martial achievement, they far surpass not only the Ottomans, but almost every sovereign family in the annals of Islam, in the cultivation of kingly virtues and arts of peace, and the refinement and love of literature, which they introduced and fostered in their dominions. During the greater part of their rule, the court of Cordova was the most polished and enlightened in Europe removed equally from the martial rudeness of those of the Frank monarchs, and the punctilious attention to forms and jealous etiquette, within which the Grcek emperors studiously intrenched themselves. The useful arts, and in particular the science of agriculture, necessary for the support of a dense population, were cultivated to an extent of which no other country afforded an example; and the commerce which filled the ports of Spain, from all parts of Europe and the East, was the natural result of the industry of her people. In how great a degree the personal character of the Umeyyan sovereigns contributed to this state of political and social prosperity, is best proved by the rapid disruption and fall of the monarchy, when it passed into the feeble hands of Hisham II., and by the history of the two following centuries of anarchy, civil war, and foreign domination. But the sun of Andalusian glory, which had attained its meridian splendour under the Khalifs of Cordova, once more emerged before the close of its course from the clouds and darkness which surrounded it;—and its setting rays shone, with concentrated lustre, over the kingdom of GRANADA.

TWO NIGHTS IN SOUTHERN MEXICO

A FRAGMENT FROM THE JOURNAL OF AN AMERICAN TRAVELLER

"A capital place this for our bivouac!" cried I, swinging myself off my mule, and stretching my arms and legs, which were stiffened by a long ride.

It was a fairish place, to all appearances—a snug ravine, well shaded by mahogany-trees, the ground covered with the luxuriant vegetation of that tropical region, a little stream bubbling and leaping and dashing down one of the high rocks that flanked the hollow, and rippling away through the tall fern towards the rear of the spot where we had halted, at the distance of a hundred yards from which the ground was low and shelving.

"A capital place this for our bivouac!"

My companion nodded. As to our lazy Mexican arrieros and servants, they said nothing, but began making arrangements for passing the night. Curse the fellows! If they had seen us preparing to lie down in a swamp, cheek by jowl with an alligator, I believe they would not have offered a word of remonstrance. Those Mexican half-breeds, half Indian half Spaniard, with sometimes a dash of the Negro, are themselves so little pervious to the dangers and evils of their soil and climate, that they never seem to remember that Yankee flesh and blood may be rather more susceptible; that niguas²⁵ and musquittoes, and vomito prieto, as they call their infernal fever, are no trifles to encounter; without mentioning the snakes, and scorpions, and alligators, and other creatures of the kind, which infest their strange, wild, unnatural, and yet beautiful country.

I had come to Mexico in company with Jonathan Rowley, a youth of Virginian raising, six and twenty years of age, six feet two in his stockings, with the limbs of a Hercules and shoulders like the side of a house. It was towards the close of 1824; and the recent emancipation of Mexico from the Spanish yoke, and its self-formation into a republic, had given it a new and strong interest to us Americans. We had been told much, too, of the beauty of the country—but in this we were at first rather disappointed; and we reached the capital without having seen any thing, except some parts of the province of Vera Cruz, that could justify the extravagant encomiums we had heard bestowed in the States upon the splendid scenery of Mexico. We had not, however, to go far southward from the chief city, before the character of the country altered, and became such as to satisfy our most sanguine expectations. Forests of palms, of oranges, citrons, and bananas, filled the valleys: the marshes and low grounds were crowded with mahogany-trees, and with immense fern plants, in height equal to trees. All nature was on a gigantic scale—the mountains of an enormous height, the face of the country seamed and split by barrancas or ravines, hundreds, ay, thousands of feet deep, and filled with the most abundant and varied vegetation. The sky, too, was of the deep glowing blue of the tropics, the sort of blue which seems varnished or clouded with gold. But this ardent climate and teeming soil are not without their disadvantages. Vermin and reptiles of all kinds, and the deadly fever of these latitudes, render the low lands uninhabitable for eight months out of the twelve. At the same time there are large districts which are comparatively free from these plagues—perfect gardens of Eden, of such extreme beauty that the mere act of living and breathing amongst their enchanting scenes, becomes a positive and real enjoyment. The heart seems to leap with delight, and the soul to be elevated, by the contemplation of those regions of fairy-like magnificence.

The most celebrated among these favoured provinces is the valley of Oaxaca, in which two mountainous districts, the Mistecca and Tzapoteca, bear off the palm of beauty. It was through this immense valley, nearly three hundred leagues in length, and surrounded by the highest mountains in Mexico, that we were now journeying. The kind attention of our chargé-d'affaires at the Mexican capital, had procured us every possible facility in travelling through a country, of which the soil was at that time rarely trodden by any but native feet. We had numerous letters to the alcaldes and authorities of the towns and villages which are sparingly sprinkled over the southern provinces of Mexico; we were to have escorts when necessary; every assistance, protection, and facility, were to be afforded us. But as neither the authorities nor his excellency, Uncle Sam's envoy, could make inns and houses where none existed, it followed that we were often obliged to sleep à la belle étoile, with the sky for a covering. And a right splendid roof it was to our bedchamber, that tropical sky, with its constellations, all new to us northerns, and every star magnified by the effect of the atmosphere to an incredible size. Mars and Saturn, Venus and Jupiter, had all disappeared; the great and little Bear were still to be seen; in the far distance the ship Argo and the glowing Centaur; and, beautiful above all, the glorious sign of Christianity the colossal Southern Cross, in all its brightness and sublimity, glittering in silvery magnificence out of its setting of dark blue crystal.

We were travelling with a state and a degree of luxury that would have excited the contempt of our backwoodsmen; but in a strange country we thought it best to do as the natives did; and accordingly, instead of mounting our horses and setting forth alone, with our rifles slung over our shoulders, and a few handfuls of parched corn and dried flesh in our hunting pouches, we journeyed Mexican fashion, with a whole string of mules, a topith or guide, a couple of arrieros or muleteers, a cook, and one or two other attendants. While the latter were slinging our hammocks to the lowermost branches of a tree—for in that part of Mexico it is not very safe to sleep upon the ground, on account of the snakes and vermin—our cocinero lit a fire against the rock, and in a very few minutes an iguana which we had shot that day was spitted and roasting before it. It looked strange to see this hideous creature, in shape between a lizard and a dragon, twisting and turning in the light of the fire; and its disgusting appearance might have taken away some people's appetites; but we knew by experience that there is no better eating than a roasted iguana. We made a hearty meal off this one, concluding it with a pull at the rum flask, and then clambered into our hammocks; the Mexicans stretched themselves on the ground with their heads upon the saddles of the mules, and both masters and men were soon asleep.

It was somewhere about midnight when I was awakened by an indescribable sensation of oppression from the surrounding atmosphere. The air seemed to be no longer air, but some poisonous exhalation that had suddenly arisen and enveloped us. From the rear of the ravine in which we lay, billows of dark mephitic mist were rolling forward, surrounding us with their baleful influence. It was the vomito prieto, the fever itself, embodied in the shape of a fog. At the same moment, and while I was gasping for breath, a sort of cloud seemed to settle upon me, and a thousand stings, like redhot needles, were run into my hands, face, neck—into every part of my limbs and body that was not triply guarded by clothing. I instinctively stretched forth my hands and closed them, clutching by the action hundreds of enormous musquittoes, whose droning, singing noise how almost deafened me. The air was literally filled by a dense swarm of these insects; and the agony caused by their repeated and venomous stings was indescribable. It was a perfect plague of Egypt.

Rowley, whose hammock was slung some ten yards from mine, soon gave tongue: I heard him kicking and plunging, spluttering and swearing, with a vigour and energy that would have been ludicrous under any other circumstances; but matters were just then too serious for a laugh. With the torture, for such it was, of the musquitto bites, and the effect of the insidious and poisonous vapours that were each moment thickening around me, I was already in a high state of fever, alternately glowing with heat and shivering with cold, my tongue parched, my eyelids throbbing, my brain seemingly on fire.

There was a heavy thump upon the ground. It was Rowley jumping out of his hammock. "Damnation" roared he, "Where are we? On the earth, or under the earth?—We must be—we are—in their Mexican purgatory. We are, or there's no snakes in Virginny. Hallo, arrieros! Pablo! Matteo!"

At that moment a scream—but a scream of such terror and anguish as I never heard before or since—a scream as of women in their hour of agony and extreme peril, sounded within a few paces of us. I sprang out of my hammock; and as I did so, two white and graceful female figures darted or rather flew by me, shrieking—and oh! in what heart-rending tones—for "Socorro! Socorro! Por Dios! Help! Help!" Close upon the heels of the fugitives, bounding and leaping along with enormous strides and springs, came three or four dark objects which resembled nothing earthly. The human form they certainly possessed; but so hideous and horrible, so unnatural and spectre-like was their aspect, that their sudden encounter in that gloomy ravine, and in the almost darkness that surrounded us, might well have shaken the strongest nerves. We stood for a second, Rowley and myself, paralysed with astonishment at these strange appearances; but another piercing scream restored to us our presence of mind. One of the women had either tripped or fallen from fatigue, and she lay a white heap, upon the ground. The drapery of the other was in the clutch of one of the spectres, or devils, or whatever they were, when Rowley, with a cry of horror, rushed forward and struck a furious blow at the monster with his machetto. At the same time, and almost without knowing how, I found myself engaged with another of the creatures. But the contest was no equal one. In vain did we stab and strike with our machettos; our antagonists were covered and defended with a hard bristly hide, which our knives, although keen and pointed, had great difficulty in penetrating; and on the other hand we found ourselves clutched in long sinewy arms, terminating in hands and fingers, of which the nails were as sharp and strong as an eagle's talons. I felt these horrible claws strike into my shoulders as the creature seized me, and, drawing me towards him, pressed me as in the hug of a bear; while his hideous half man half brute visage was grinning and snarling at me, and his long keen white teeth were snapping and gnashing within six inches of my face.

"God of heaven! This is horrible! Rowley! Help me!"

But Rowley, in spite of his gigantic strength, was powerless as an infant in the grasp of these terrible opponents. He was within a few paces of me, struggling with two of them, and making superhuman efforts to regain possession of his knife, which had dropped or been wrenched from his hand. And all this time, where were our arrieros? Were they attacked likewise? Why didn't they come and help us? All this time!—pshaw! it was no time: it all passed in the space of a few seconds, in the circumference of a few yards, and in the feeble glimmering light of the stars, and of the smouldering embers of our fire, which was at some distance from us.

"Ha! That has told!" A stab, dealt with all the energy of despair, had entered my antagonist's side. But I was like to pay dearly for it. Uttering a deafening yell of pain and fury, the monster clasped me closer to his foul and loathsome body; his sharp claws, dug deeper into my back, seemed to tear up my flesh: the agony was insupportable—my eyes began to swim, and my senses to leave me. Just then—Crack! crack! Two—four—a dozen musket and pistol shots, followed by such a chorus of yellings and howlings and unearthly laughter! The creature that held me seemed startled—relaxed his grasp slightly. At that moment a dark arm was passed before my face, there was a blinding flash, a yell, and I fell to the ground released from the clutch of my opponent. I remember nothing more. Overcome by pain, fatigue, terror, and the noxious vapors of that vile ravine, my senses abandoned me, and I swooned away.

When consciousness returned, I found myself lying upon some blankets, under a sort of arbour of foliage and flowers. It was broad day; the sun shone brightly, the blossoms smelled sweet, the gay-plumaged hummingbirds were darting and shooting about in the sunbeams like so many animated fragments of a prism. A Mexican Indian, standing beside my couch, and whose face was unknown to me, held out a cocoa-nutshell containing some liquid, which I eagerly seized, and drank off the contents. The draught (it was a mixture of citron juice and water) revived me greatly; and raising myself on my elbow, although with much pain and difficulty, I looked around, and beheld a scene of bustle and life which to me was quite unintelligible. Upon the shelving hillside on which I was lying, a sort of encampment was established. A number of mules and horses were wandering about at liberty, or fastened to trees and bushes, and eating the forage that had been collected and laid before them. Some were provided with handsome and commodious saddles, while others had pack-saddles, intended apparently for the conveyance of numerous sacks, cases, and wallets, that were scattered about on the ground. Several muskets and rifles were leaning here and there against the trees; and a dozen or fifteen men were occupied in various ways—some filling up saddle-bags or fastening luggage on the mules, others lying on the ground smoking, one party surrounding a fire at which cooking was going on. At a short distance from my bed was another similarly composed couch, occupied by a man muffled up in blankets, and having his back turned towards me, so that I was unable to obtain a view of his features.