The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Volume I Part 28

[22] Garibay, Compendio, lib. 39, cap. 3.

[23] Zurita, a.n.a.les, lib. 20, cap. 42.

[24] L. Marineo, Cosas Memorables, fol. 169.

[25] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. ii. p. 147.--Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. pp. 248 et seq.--Pedraza, Antiguedad y Excelencias de Granada, (Madrid, 1608,) lib. 1.--Pedraza has collected the various etymologies of the term _Granada_, which some writers have traced to the fact of the city having been the spot where the _pomegranate_ was first introduced from Africa; others to the large quant.i.ty of _grain_ in which its vega abounded; others again to the resemblance which the city, divided into two hills thickly sprinkled with houses, bore to a half-opened pomegranate. (Lib. 2, cap. 17.) The arms of the city, which were in part composed of a pomegranate, would seem to favor the derivation of its name from that of the fruit.

[26] Pedraza, Antiguedad de Granada, fol. 101.--Denina, Delle Rivoluzioni d'Italia, (Venezia, 1816,) Capmany y Montpalau, Memorias Historicas sobre la Marina, Comercio, y Artes de Barcelona, (Madrid, 1779-92,) tom. iii. p.

218; tom. iv. pp. 67 et seq.--Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii.

cap. 26.--The amba.s.sador of the emperor Frederic III., on his pa.s.sage to the court of Lisbon in the middle of the fifteenth century, contrasts the superior cultivation, as well as general civilization, of Granada at this period with that of the other countries of Europe through which he had travelled. Sismondi, Histoire des Republiques Italiennes du Moyen-Age, (Paris, 1818,) tom. ix. p. 405.

[27] Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. pp. 250-258.--The fifth volume of the royal Spanish Academy of History contains an erudite essay by Conde on Arabic money, princ.i.p.ally with reference to that coined in Spain, pp. 225-315.

[28] A specification of a royal donative in that day may serve to show the martial spirit of the age. In one of these, made by the king of Granada to the Castilian sovereign, we find twenty n.o.ble steeds of the royal stud, reared on the banks of the Xenil, with superb caparisons, and the same number of scimitars richly garnished with gold and jewels; and, in another, mixed up with perfumes and cloth of gold, we meet with a litter of tame lions. (Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. pp. 163, 183.) This latter symbol of royalty appears to have been deemed peculiarly appropriate to the kings of Leon. Ferreras informs us that the amba.s.sadors from France at the Castilian court, in 1434, were received by John II.

with a full-grown domesticated lion crouching at his feet. (Hist.

d'Espagne, tom. vi. p. 401.) The same taste appears still to exist in Turkey. Dr. Clarke, in his visit to Constantinople, met with one of these terrific pets, who used to follow his master, Ha.s.san Pacha, about like a dog.

[29] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. cap. 28.--Henriquez del Castillo (Cronica, cap. 138,) gives an account of an intended duel between two Castilian n.o.bles, in the presence of the king of Granada, as late as 1470. One of the parties, Don Alfonso de Aguilar, failing to keep his engagement, the other rode round the lists in triumph, with his adversary's portrait contemptuously fastened to the tail of his horse.

[30] It must be admitted, that these ballads, as far as facts are concerned, are too inexact to furnish other than a very slippery foundation for history. The most beautiful portion perhaps of the Moorish ballads, for example, is taken up with the feuds of the Abencerrages in the latter days of Granada. Yet this family, whose romantic story is still repeated to the traveller amid the ruins of the Alhambra, is scarcely noticed, as far as I am aware, by contemporary writers, foreign or domestic, and would seem to owe its chief celebrity to the apocryphal version of Cines Perez de Hyta, whose "Milesian tales," according to the severe sentence of Nic. Antonio, "are fit only to amuse the lazy and the listless." (Bibliotheca Nova, tom. i. p. 536.)

But, although the Spanish ballads are not ent.i.tled to the credit of strict historical doc.u.ments, they may yet perhaps be received in evidence of the prevailing character of the social relations of the age; a remark indeed predicable of most works of fiction, written by authors contemporary with the events they describe, and more especially so of that popular minstrelsy, which, emanating from a simple, uncorrupted cla.s.s, is less likely to swerve from truth, than more ostentatious works of art. The long cohabitation of the Saracens with the Christians, (full evidence of which is afforded by Capmany, (Mem. de Barcelona, tom. iv. Apend. no. 11,) who quotes a doc.u.ment from the public archives of Catalonia, showing the great number of Saracens residing in Aragon even in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the most flouris.h.i.+ng period of the Granadian empire,) had enabled many of them confessedly to speak and write the Spanish language with purity and elegance. Some of the graceful little songs, which are still chanted by the peasantry of Spain in their dances, to the accompaniment of the castanet, are referred by a competent critic (Conde, De la Poesia Oriental, MS.) to an Arabian origin. There can be little hazard, therefore, in imputing much of this peculiar minstrelsy to the Arabians themselves, the contemporaries, and perhaps the eye- witnesses, of the events they celebrate.

[31] Casiri (Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 259) has transcribed a pa.s.sage from an Arabian author of the fourteenth century, inveighing bitterly against the luxury of the Moorish ladies, their gorgeous apparel and habits of expense, "amounting almost to insanity," in a tone which may remind one of the similar philippic by his contemporary Dante, against his fair countrywomen of Florence.--Two ordinances of a king of Granada, cited by Conde in his History, prescribed the separation of the women from the men in the mosques; and prohibit their attendance on certain festivals, without the protection of their husbands or some near relative.--Their _femmes savantes_, as we have seen, were in the habit of conferring freely with men of letters, and of a.s.sisting in person at the academical _seances_.--And lastly, the frescoes alluded to in the text represent the presence of females at the tournaments, and the fortunate knight receiving the palm of victory from their hands.

[32] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. p. 340; tom. iii. p. 119.

[33] Casiri, on Arabian authority, computes it at 200,000 men. Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. i. p. 338.

[34] Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, p. 250.

[35] Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. p. 169.--These ruined fortifications still thickly stud the border territories of Granada; and many an Andalusian mill, along the banks of the Guadayra and Guadalquivir, retains its battlemented tower, which served for the defence of its inmates against the forays of the enemy.

[36] D'Herbelot, (Bib. Orientale, tom. i. p. 630,) among other authentic traditions of Mahomet, quotes one as indicating his encouragement of letters, viz. "That the ink of the doctors and the blood of the martyrs are of equal price." M. OElsner (Des Effets de la Religion de Mohammed, Paris, 1810) has cited several others of the same liberal import. But such traditions cannot be received in evidence of the original doctrine of the prophet. They are rejected as apocryphal by the Persians and the whole sect of the s.h.i.+tes, and are ent.i.tled to little weight with a European.

[37] When the caliph Al Mamon encouraged, by his example as well as patronage, a more enlightened policy, he was accused by the more orthodox Mussulmans of attempting to subvert the principles of their religion. See Poc.o.c.ke, Spec. Hist. Arab.u.m, (Oxon. 1650,) p. 166.

[38] Andres, Letteratura, part. 1, cap. 8, 10.--Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. pp. 71, 251, et pa.s.sim.

[39] Casiri mentions one of these universal geniuses, who published no less than a thousand and fifty treatises on the various topics of Ethics, History, Law, Medicine, etc.! Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 107.

--See also tom. i. p. 370; tom. ii. p. 71 et alibi.--Zuniga, Annales de Sevilla, p. 22.--D'Herbelot, Bib. Orientale, voce _Tarikh_.--Masdeu, Historia Critica, tom. xiii. pp. 203, 205.--Andres, Letteratura, part. 1, cap. 8.

[40] Consult the sensible, though perhaps severe, remarks of Degerando on Arabian science. (Hist. de la Philosophie, tom. iv. cap. 24.)--The reader may also peruse with advantage a disquisition on Arabian metaphysics in Turner's History of England, (vol. iv. pp. 405-449.--Brucker, Hist.

Philosophiae, tom. in. p. 105.)--Ludovicus Vives seems to have been the author of the imputation in the text. (Nic. Antonio, Bibliotheca Vetus, tom. ii. p. 394.) Averroes translated some of the philosophical works of Aristotle from the Greek into Arabic; a Latin version of which translation was afterwards made. Though D'Herbelot is mistaken (Bib. Orientale, art.

_Roschd_) in saying that Averroes was the first who translated Aristotle into Arabic; as this had been done two centuries before, at least, by Honain and others in the ninth century, (see Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. i. p. 304,) and Bayle has shown that a Latin version of the Stagirite was used by the Europeans before the alleged period. See art. _Averroes_.

[41] Sprengel, Histoire de la Medecine, traduite par Jourdan, (Paris, 1815,) tom. ii. pp. 263 et seq.

[42] Degerando, Hist. de la Philosophie, tom. iv. ubi supra.

[43] Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 9.--Andres, Letteratura, part.

1, cap. 10.

[44] Letteratura Italiana, tom. v. p. 87.

[45] The battle of Crecy furnishes the earliest instance on record of the use of artillery by the European Christians; although Du Cange, among several examples which he enumerates, has traced a distinct notice of its existence as far back as 1338. (Glossarium ad Scriptores Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, (Paris, 1739,) and Supplement, (Paris, 1766,) voce _Bombarda_.) The history of the Spanish Arabs carries it to a much earlier period. It was employed by the Moorish king of Granada at the siege of Baza, in 1312 and 1325. (Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom.

iii. cap. 18.--Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 7.) It is distinctly noticed in an Arabian treatise as ancient as 1249; and, finally, Casiri quotes a pa.s.sage from a Spanish author at the close of the eleventh Century, (whose MS., according to Nic. Antonio, though familiar to scholars, lies still entombed in the dust of libraries,) which describes the use of artillery in a naval engagement of that period between the Moors of Tunis and of Seville. Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 8.--Nic, Antonio, Bibliotheca Vetus, tom. ii.

p. 12.

[46] Petrarch complains, in one of his letters from the country, that "jurisconsults and divines, nay his own valet, had taken to rhyming; and he was afraid the very cattle might begin to low in verse;" apud De Sade, Memoires pour la Vie de Petrarque, tom. iii. p. 243.

[47] Andres, Letteratura, part. 1, cap. 11.--Yet this popular a.s.sertion is contradicted by Reinesius, who states, that both Homer and Pindar were translated into Arabic by the middle of the eighth century. See Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, (Hamb. 1712-38,) tom. xii. p. 753.

[48] Sir William Jones, Traite sur la Poesie Orientale, sec. 2.--Sismondi says that Sir W. Jones is mistaken in citing the history of Timour by Ebn.

Arabschah, as an Arabic epic. (Litterature du Midi, tom. i. p. 57.) It is Sismondi who is mistaken, since the English critic states that the Arabs have no heroic poem, and that this poetical prose history is not accounted such even by the Arabs themselves.

[49] It would require much more learning than I am fortified with, to enter into the merits of the question, which has been raised respecting the probable influence of the Arabian on the literature of Europe. A. V.

Schlegel, in a work of little bulk, but much value, in refuting with his usual vivacity the extravagant theory of Andres, has been led to conclusions of an opposite nature, which may be thought perhaps scarcely less extravagant. (Observations sur la Langue et la Litterature Provencales, p. 64.) It must indeed seem highly improbable that the Saracens, who, during the Middle Ages, were so far superior in science and literary culture to the Europeans, could have resided so long in immediate contact with them, and in those very countries indeed which gave birth to the most cultivated poetry of that period, without exerting some perceptible influence upon it. Be this as it may, its influence on the Castilian cannot reasonably be disputed. This has been briefly traced by Conde in an "Essay on Oriental Poetry," _Poesia Oriental_, whose publication he antic.i.p.ates in the Preface to his "History of the Spanish Arabs," but which still remains in ma.n.u.script. (The copy I have used is in the library of Mr. George Ticknor.) He professes in this work to discern in the earlier Castilian poetry, in the Cid, the Alexander, in Berceo's, the arch-priest of Hita's, and others of similar antiquity, most of the peculiarities and varieties of Arabian verse; the same cadences and number of syllables, the same intermixture of a.s.sonances and consonances, the double hemistich and prolonged repet.i.tion of the final rhyme. From the same source he derives much of the earlier rural minstrelsy of Spain, as well as the measures of its romances and seguidillas; and in the Preface to his History, he has ventured on the bold a.s.sertion, that the Castilian owes so much of its vocabulary to the Arabic, that it may be almost accounted a dialect of the latter. Conde's criticisms, however, must be quoted with reserve. His habitual studies had given him such a keen relish for Oriental literature, that he was, in a manner, _denaturalized_ from his own.

[50] Byron's beautiful line may seem almost a version of Conde's Spanish text, "sucesos de armas y de amores con muy estranos lances y en elegante estilo."--Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. p. 457.

[51] Sismondi, in his Litterature du Midi, (tom. i. pp. 267 et seq.), and more fully in his Republiques Italiennes, (tom. xvi. pp. 448 et seq.), derives the jealousy of the s.e.x, the ideas of honor, and the deadly spirit of revenge, which distinguished the southern nations of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, from the Arabians. Whatever be thought of the jealousy of the s.e.x, it might have been supposed that the principles of honor and the spirit of revenge might, without seeking further, find abundant precedent in the feudal habits and inst.i.tutions of our European ancestors.

[52] "Quas _perversivnes_ potius, quam _versiones_ merito dixeris."

Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. i. p. 266.

CHAPTER IX.

WAR OF GRANADA.--SURPRISE OF ZAHARA.--CAPTURE OF ALHAMA.

1481-1482.

Zahara Surprised by the Moors.--Marquis of Cadiz.--His Expedition against Alhama.--Valor of the Citizens.--Desperate Struggle.--Fall of Alhama.-- Consternation of the Moors.--Vigorous Measures of the Queen.

No sooner had Ferdinand and Isabella restored internal tranquillity to their dominions, and made the strength effective which had been acquired by their union under one government, than they turned their eyes to those fair regions of the Peninsula, over which the Moslem crescent had reigned triumphant for nearly eight centuries. Fortunately, an act of aggression on the part of the Moors furnished a pretext for entering on their plan of conquest, at the moment when it was ripe for execution. Aben Ismael, who had ruled in Granada during the latter part of John the Second's reign, and the commencement of Henry the Fourth's, had been partly indebted for his throne to the former monarch; and sentiments of grat.i.tude, combined with a naturally amiable disposition, had led him to foster as amicable relations with the Christian princes, as the jealousy of two nations, that might be considered the natural enemies of each other, would permit; so that, notwithstanding an occasional border foray, or the capture of a frontier fortress, such a correspondence was maintained between the two kingdoms, that the n.o.bles of Castile frequently resorted to the court of Granada, where, forgetting their ancient feuds, they mingled with the Moorish cavaliers in the generous pastimes of chivalry.

Muley Abul Hacen, who succeeded his father in 1466, was of a very different temperament. His fiery character prompted him, when very young, to violate the truce by an unprovoked inroad into Andalusia; and, although after his accession domestic troubles occupied him too closely to allow leisure for foreign war, he still cherished in secret the same feelings of animosity against the Christians. When, in 1476, the Spanish sovereigns required as the condition of a renewal of the truce, which he solicited, the payment of the annual tribute imposed on his predecessors, he proudly replied that "the mints of Granada coined no longer gold, but steel." His subsequent conduct did not belie the spirit of this Spartan answer.

[1]

At length, towards the close of the year 1481, the storm which had been so long gathering burst upon Zahara, a small fortified town on the frontier of Andalusia, crowning a lofty eminence, washed at its base by the river Guadalete, which from its position seemed almost inaccessible. The garrison, trusting to these natural defences, suffered itself to be surprised on the night of the 20th of December, by the Moorish monarch; who, scaling the walls under favor of a furious tempest, which prevented his approach from being readily heard, put to the sword such of the guard as offered resistance, and swept away the whole population of the place, men, women, and children, in slavery to Granada.

The intelligence of this disaster caused deep mortification to the Spanish sovereigns, especially to Ferdinand, by whose grandfather Zahara had been recovered from the Moors. Measures were accordingly taken for strengthening the whole line of frontier, and the utmost vigilance was exerted to detect some vulnerable point of the enemy, on which retaliation might be successfully inflicted. Neither were the tidings of their own successes welcomed, with the joy that might have been expected, by the people of Granada. The prognostics, it was said, afforded by the appearance of the heavens, boded no good. More sure prognostics were afforded in the judgments of thinking men, who deprecated the temerity of awakening the wrath of a vindictive and powerful enemy, "Woe is me!"

exclaimed an ancient Alfaki, on quitting the hall of audience, "the ruins of Zahara will fall on our own heads; the days of the Moslem empire in Spain are now numbered!" [2]

It was not long before the desired opportunity for retaliation presented itself to the Spaniards. One Juan de Ortega, a captain of _escaladores_, or sealers, so denominated from the peculiar service in which they were employed in besieging cities, who had acquired some reputation under John the Second, in the wars of Roussillon, reported to Diego de Merlo, a.s.sistant of Seville, that the fortress of Albania, situated in the heart of the Moorish territories, was so negligently guarded, that it might be easily carried by an enemy, who had skill enough to approach it. The fortress, as well as the city of the same name, which it commanded, was built, like many others in that turbulent period, along the crest of a rocky eminence, encompa.s.sed by a river at its base, and, from its natural advantages, might be deemed impregnable. This strength of position, by rendering all other precautions apparently superfluous, lulled its defenders into a security like that which had proved so fatal to Zahara. Alhama, as this Arabic name implies, was famous for its baths, whose annual rents are said to have amounted to five hundred thousand ducats. The monarchs of Granada, indulging the taste common to the people of the east, used to frequent this place, with their court, to refresh themselves with its delicious waters, so that Alhama became embellished with all the magnificence of a royal residence. The place was still further enriched by its being the _depot_ of the public taxes on land, which const.i.tuted a princ.i.p.al branch of the revenue, and by its various manufactures of cloth, for which its inhabitants were celebrated throughout the kingdom of Granada. [3]