The Story of Moors in Spain. Stanley Lane-Poole
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.
At first of course there was a brief period of confusion, some burning, pillaging, massacring; but this was soon checked by the Arab governors. When things had settled down again, the subject populations found themselves at least no worse off than before, and they shortly began to perceive that they had benefited by the change of rulers. They were permitted to retain their own laws and judges; governors of their own race administered the districts, collected the taxes, and determined such differences as arose amongst themselves. The citizen classes, instead of bearing the whole burden of the State expenditure, had only to pay a poll-tax of no very exacting amount, and they were free of all obligations; unless they held cultivable land, in which case they paid theKharaj or land-tax as well. The poll-tax was graduated according to the rank of the payer, from twelve to forty-eight dirhems a year, or from about three to twelve pounds at our present purchasing power of money; and its collection in twelve monthly instalments made it the easier to meet. The poll-tax was an impost upon heresy; it was levied only upon Christians and Jews: the land-tax, on the other hand, which varied according to the productiveness of the soil, was assessed equally on Christians, Jews, and Moslems. As a rule the old proprietors and cities preserved their property as before the conquest. The lands of the Church, indeed, and of those landowners who had fled to the mountains of the north, were confiscated, but even then their serfs were left upon them as cultivators, and were only required to pay a certain proportion, varying from a third to four-fifths, of the produce, to their new Moslem lords. Sometimes the cities, such as Merida and Orihuela, had been able to obtain exceptionally favourable terms from the conquerors, and were suffered to retain their goods and lands upon the payment of a fixed tribute. At the worst, beyond the poll-tax, the Christians were in no way subject to heavier exactions than their Moslem neighbours. They had even gained a right which had never been permitted them by the Gothic kings: they could alienate their lands.7 In religious toleration they had nothing to regret. Instead of persecuting them, and forcing upon them a compulsory conversion, as the Goths had upon the Jews, the Arabs left them free to worship whom or what they pleased; and so valuable was the poll-tax to the treasury, that the Sultans of Cordova were much more disposed to discourage than to welcome any considerable missionary fervour that might deprive the State of so useful a source of revenue. The result was that the Christians were satisfied with the new régime, and openly admitted that they preferred the rule of the Moors to that of the Franks or Goths. Even their priests, who had lost most of all, were at first but little incensed with the change, as the old chronicle, ascribed to Isidore of Beja, written at Cordova in 754, shows. The good monk is not even scandalized at so unholy an alliance as the marriage between Roderick's widow and the son of Mūsa. But the best proof of the satisfaction of the Christians with their new rulers is the fact that there was not a single religious revolt during the eighth century.
Above all, the slaves, who had been cruelly ill-used by the Goths and Romans, had cause to congratulate themselves upon the change. Slavery is a very mild and humane institution in the hands of a good Mohammedan. The Arabian Prophet, while unable to do away with an ancient institution, which was nevertheless repugnant to the socialistic principles of Islam, did his utmost to soften the rigours of slavery. "God," said he, "hath ordained that your brothers should be your slaves: therefore him whom God hath ordained to be the slave of his brother, his brother must give him of the food which he eateth himself, and of the clothes wherewith he clotheth himself, and not order him to do anything beyond his power.... A man who ill-treats his slave will not enter into Paradise." There is no more commendable action in Mohammedan morals than to free slaves, and such enfranchisement is enjoined by the Prophet especially as an atonement for an undeserved blow or other injustice. In Andalusia, the slaves upon the estates that had passed from the Christians into the possession of Moslems were almost in the position of small farmers; their Mohammedan masters, whose trade was war, and who despised heartily such menial occupations as tilling the soil, left them free to cultivate the land as they pleased, and only insisted on a fair return of products. Slaves of Christians, instead of being hopelessly condemned to servitude for all their lives, were now provided with the simplest possible road to freedom: they had only to go to the nearest Mohammedan of repute, and repeat the formula of belief, "There is no god but God, and Mohammed is His Prophet," and they became immediately free. Conversion to Islam thus carried with it enfranchisement, and it is no wonder that we find the Spanish slaves hastening to profess the new faith and thus to become free men. The Catholic priests had taken small pains to graft the Christian religion into their hearts; they had enough to do to look after their estates and the souls of the nobles without troubling themselves about the spiritual wants of the ignorant; and the change from semi-pagan, semi-Christian, vacuity to a perhaps equally unintelligent apprehension of Islam was no very severe wrench to the servile mind. Nor were the slaves by any means the only converts to the new religion. Many of the large proprietors and men of position became Mohammedans, either to avoid the poll-tax, or to preserve their estates, or because they honestly