Christianity and Islam in Spain, A.D. 756-1031 Part 19

[8] _Ibid._, i. p. 406, note.

[9] In the fourteenth century.

[10] ? Chapter 67.

[11] Conde, ii. 154. Unless the writer is referring to Christian nuns.

But over and above copying the inst.i.tutions of Christianity, Islam shews signs of having become to a certain extent pervaded with a Christian spirit. It is easy to be mistaken in such things, but the following anecdotes are more in keeping with the Bible than the Koran.

Hischem I. (788-796) in his last words to his son, Hakem I., said: "Consider well that all empire is in the hand of G.o.d, who bestoweth it on whom He will, and from whom He will He taketh it away.[1] But since G.o.d hath given to us the royal authority and power, which is in our hands by His goodness only, let us obey His holy will, which is no other than that we do good to all men,[2] and in especial to those placed under our protection. See thou therefore, O my son, that thou distribute equal justice to rich and poor, nor permit that any wrong or oppression be committed in thy kingdom, for by injustice is the road to perdition.

Be clement, and do right to all who depend upon thee, for all are the creatures of G.o.d."[3]

The son was not inferior to the father, and capable, as the following story shews, of the most Christian generosity.[4] One of the faquirs who had rebelled against Hakem being captured and brought into the presence of the king, did not shrink in his bigotry and hate from telling the Sultan that in hating him he was obeying G.o.d. Hakem answered: "He who bid thee, as thou sayest, hate me, bids me pardon thee. Go, and live in G.o.d's protection."[5]

[1] Daniel, iv. 25, and Koran, ii. v. 249--"G.o.d giveth His kingdom unto whom He pleaseth;" and Koran, iii. v. 24.

[2] Galatians vi. 20--"Let us do good unto all men, especially unto them that are of the household of faith."

[3] Conde, i. 240.

[4] It is fair to state that Hakem I. was not always so generous.

[5] Lane-Poole, "Story of the Moors," p. 77.

p.r.o.ne as the Mohammedans were to superst.i.tion, and many as are the miracles and wonders, which are described in their histories, it must be acknowledged that their capacity for imagining and believing in miracles never equalled that of Christian priests in the Middle Ages.[1]

We hear indeed of a vision of Mohammed appearing to Tarik, the invader of Spain;[2] of a miraculous spring gus.h.i.+ng forth at the prayer of Akbar ibn Nafir;[3] of the marvellous cap of Omar;[4] of the wonders that distinguished the corpse of the murdered Hosein; of the vision shewing the tomb of Abu Ayub;[5] but nothing that will bear a comparison with the invention of St James' body at Ira Flavia (Padron), nor the clumsy and unblus.h.i.+ng forgery of relics at Granada in the year of the Armada.[6] Yet the following story of Baki ibn Mokhlid, from Al Kusheyri,[7] reminds us forcibly of similar monkish extravagancies. A woman came to Baki, and said that, her son being a prisoner in the hands of the Franks, she intended to sell her house and go in search of him; but before doing so she asked his advice. Leaving her for a moment he requested her to wait for his answer. He then went out and prayed fervently for her son's release, and telling the mother what he had done, dismissed her. Some time after the mother came back with her son to thank Baki for his pious interference, which had procured her son's release. The son then told his story:--"I was the king's slave, and used to go out daily with my brother slaves to certain works on which we were employed. One day, as we were going I felt all of a sudden as if my fetters were being knocked off. I looked down to my feet, when lo! I saw the heavy irons fall down broken on each side." The inspector naturally charged him with trying to escape, but he denied on oath, saying that his fetters had fallen off without his knowing how. They were then riveted on again with additional nails, but again fell off.

The youth goes on:--"The Christians then consulted their priests on the miraculous occurrence, and one of them came to me and inquired whether I had a father. I said 'No, but I have a mother.' Well, then, said the priest to the Christians, 'G.o.d, no doubt, has listened to her prayers.

Set him at liberty,'" which was immediately done. As a set-off to this there is a remarkable instance of freedom from superst.i.tion recorded of King Almundhir(881-2).[8] On the occasion of an earthquake, the people being greatly alarmed, and looking upon it as a direct interposition of G.o.d, this enlightened prince did his best to convince them that such things were natural phenomena, and had no relation to the good or evil that men did,[9] shewing that the earth trembled for Christian and Moslem alike, for the most innocent as well as the most injurious of creatures without distinction. They, however, refused to be convinced.

[1] See the story of Atahulphus, Bishop of Compostella, and the bull--Alfonso of Burgos, ch. 66: a man swallowed up by the earth--Mariana, viii. 4: Sancho the Great's arm withered and restored--_Ibid._, c. 10: a Sabellian heretic carried off by the devil in sight of a large congregation--Isidore of Beja, sec. 69: the miracle of the roses (1050)--Mar. ix. 3.

[2] Cardonne, i. p. 72.

[3] _Ibid_, p. 38.

[4] See Ockley.

[5] Gibbon, "for such are the manufacture of every religion,"

p. 115.

[6] See Geddes, Miscell. Tracts, "an account of MSS. and relics found at Granada." But we must remember that these miraculous phenomena appear much earlier in the history of Islam than of Christianity.

[7] Al Makkari, ii. 129; cp. Conde, i. 355.

[8] Conde, i. 317.

[9] Cp. Matt. v. 45: Luke xiii. 4.

This independence of thought in Almundhir was perhaps an outcome of that philosophic spirit which first shewed itself in Spain in the reign of this Sultan's predecessor.[1] The philosophizers were looked upon with horror by the theologians, who worked upon the people, so that at times they were ready to stone and burn the free-thinkers.[2] The works of Ibnu Ma.s.sara, a prominent member of this school, were burnt publicly at Cordova;[3] and the great Almanzor, though himself, like the great Caesar, indifferent to such questions,[4] by way of gaining the support of the ma.s.ses, was ready, or pretended to be ready, to execute one of these philosophers. At length, with feigned reluctance, he granted the man's life at the request of a learned faqui.[5]

Even among the Mohammedan "clergy"--if the term be allowable--there were Sceptics and Deists,[6] and others who followed the wild speculations of Greek philosophy. Among the last of these, the greatest name was Averroes, or more correctly, Abu Walid ibn Roshd (1126-1198), who besides holding peculiar views about the human soul that would almost const.i.tute him a Pantheist, taught that religion was not a branch of knowledge that could be systematised, but an inward personal power:[7]

that science and religion could not be fused together. Owing to his freedom of thought he was banished to a place near Cordova by Yusuf abu Yakub in 1196. He was also persecuted and put into prison by Abdulmumen, son of Almansur,[8] for studying natural philosophy. Another votary of the same forbidden science, Ibn Habib, was put to death by the same king.

[1] Dozy, iii. 18.

[2] Al Makk., i. 136, 141. They were called Zendik or heretics by the pious Moslems. See also Said of Toledo, apud Dozy, iii.

109.

[3] Al Makk., ii. 121.

[4] He was supposed to be in secret addicted to the forbidden study of Natural Science and Astrology.--Al Makk., i. 141. Yet he let the faquis make an "index expurgatorius" of books to be burnt.--Dozy, iii. 115. His namesake, Yakub Almansur (1184-1199), ordered all books on Logic and Philosophy to be burnt.

[5] Dozy, iii. 261.

[6] Dozy, iii. 262, 263.

[7] See article in the "Encyclop. Britann."

[8] Al Makk., i. 198. De Gayangos, in a note, points out that this was a mistake: for Abdulmumen was grandfather of Yakub Almansur, and could not be the king meant here. He therefore reads, "Yakub, one of the Beni Abdulmumen."

Side by side with, and in bitter hostility to, the earlier freethinkers lived the faquis or theologians. The Andalusians originally belonged to the Mohammedan sect of Al Auzai[1] (711-774), whose doctrines were brought into Spain by the Syrian Arabs of Damascus. But Hischem I., on coming to the throne, shewed his preference for the doctrines of Malik ibn Aus,[2] and contrived that they should supplant the dogmas of Al Auzai. It may be that Hischem I. only shewed a leaning towards Malik's creed, without persuading others to conform to his views, but at all events the change was fully accomplished in the reign of his successor, Hakem I., by the instrumentality of Yahya ibn Yahya Al Seythi, Abu Merwan Abdulmalek ibn Habib,[3] and Abdallah Zeyad ibn Abdurrahman Allakhmi, three notable theologians of that reign. Yahya returned from a pilgrimage to the East in 827, and immediately took the lead in the opposition offered to Hakem I. on the ground of his being a lax Mussulman, but, in reality, because he would not give the faquis enough power in the State.[4]

In the reign of Mohammed (852) these faquis had become powerful enough to impeach the orthodoxy of a well-known devout Mussulman, Abu Abdurrahman ibn Mokhli, but the Sultan, with a wise discretion, as commendable as it was rare, declared that the distinctions of the Ulema were cavils, and that the expositions of the new traditionist "conveyed much useful instruction, and inculcated very laudable practices."[5]

Efforts were made from time to time to overthrow this priestly ascendency, as notably by Ghazali, the "Vivificator," as he was called, "of religious knowledge." This attempt failed, and the rebel against authority was excommunicated.[6] Yet the strictly oxthodox party did not succeed in arresting--to any appreciable extent--the progress of the decay which was threatening to attack even the distinctive features of the Mohammedan religion.[7] It is a slight indication of this, that the peculiar Moslem dress gradually began to be given up, and the turban was only worn by faquis,[8] and even they could not induce the people to return to a habit once thought of great importance.[9]

[1] Al Makk., i. 403. De Gayangos' note.

[2] Died 780. Al Makk., i. 113, 343, ascribes the change to Hakem I.; and an author quoted, i. p. 403, ascribes it to Abdurrahman I.

[3] Al Makk., ii. 123.

[4] Al Makk., i. 113, implies the reverse of this. Dozy, ii. p.

59.

[5] Conde, i. 294.

[6] Dozy, iv. 255.

[7] In spite of Al Makkari's statement, i. 112, where he says that all innovations and heretical practices were abhorred by the people. If the Khalif, he says, had countenanced any such, he would have been torn to pieces.

[8] Dozy, iii. 271.

[9] Al Makkari, ii. 109.

But in other and more important respects we can see the disintegrating effect which intercourse with Christians had upon the social inst.i.tutions of the Koran.[1]

_(a.)_ Wine, which is expressly forbidden by Mohammed,[2] was much drunk throughout the country,[3] the example being often set by the king himself. Hakem I. seems to have been the first of these to drink the forbidden juice.[4] His namesake, Hakem II. (961-976), however, set his face against the practice of drinking wine, and even gave orders for all the vines in his kingdom to be rooted up--an edict which he recalled at the instance of his councillors, who pointed out that it would ruin many poor families, and would not cure the evil, as wine would be smuggled in or illicitly made of figs or other fruit. Hakem consequently contented himself with forbidding anew the use of spirituous liquors in the most stringent terms.[5] Even the faquis had taken to drinking wine, and they defended the practice by saying that the prohibition might be disregarded by Moslems, who were engaged in a perpetual war with infidels.