CHAPTER III

_Toledo under Moslem Rule_

"It must not be supposed that the Moors," writes Mr Lane Poole in his "History of the Moors in Spain," "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.... 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.... What they wanted was not a creed, but the power to live their lives in peace and prosperity. This their Moorish masters gave them.... The Christians were satisfied with the new regime, and openly admitted that they preferred the rule of the Moors to that of the Franks or the Goths."

Toledo alone, true to its character of rebel, met the Moors in an attitude of violent resistance. The Jews had opened her gates to the invaders, but the exact date of the fall of Toledo into Saracen hands is unknown. Historians differ, but keep within the dates 712 and 719. The town capitulated with considerable advantages. She maintained her right to hold arms and horses, and all the citizens who remained were secured perfect freedom, but those who left the city forfeited their property and rights. The citizens were inviolable in their houses, their orchards, and farms, and the annual tribute levied by the Moors was a very moderate one. The free exercise of religion was permitted, and the Christians were allowed seven churches by the State, Santa Justa, Santa Eulalia, San Sebastian, San Marcos, San Lucas, San Torcuato, and Santa Maria de Alficin. But they were not allowed to build others without permission, nor were processions or public ceremonies allowed. They were left to the observance of their own laws and customs, subject to sentence at the hands of their own judges, but were exempted of Christian punishment if they chose to accept their conqueror's creed.

Tarik, entering Toledo, found it almost empty, but for the Jewish colony. Most of the inhabitants had taken refuge among the steep and rocky mountain-passes outside the city. Only a few noble families had decided to remain and make the best of Moslem rule. In the royal palace Tarik seized twenty-five golden and jewelled crowns, and amongst the vast Gothic treasure, the psalms of David, written upon gold leaf in water made of dissolved rubies, and Solomon's emerald table wrought in burnished silver and gold, which the Arabian chronicler describes as "the most beautiful thing ever seen, with its golden vases and plates of a precious green stone, and three collars of rubies, emerald, and pearls." This sumptuous table is said to have been one of the causes of quarrel between Tarik and Mûsa, the latter holding his brilliant lieutenant as responsible for the missing golden leg. Whither have this emerald table and the psalms of David written in dissolved rubies on gold leaf been spirited? We have the crowns of the Gothic kings still; why not the table of Solomon fashioned of material just as enduring?

The first quaint episode after the conquest of Toledo is the marriage of Mûsa's son, Belacin, with King Roderick's widow, Blanche. Mûsa decided upon the marriage in his high-handed way, and Doña Blanche bitterly complained in Belacin's presence of the indignity offered her in this incongruous union. "Good mistress," said Belacin, in protesting affability, "do not fret, for by the law we are permitted to have seven wives. If it can be settled, I would have you for my wife as each one of these; and all the things that your law commands a man to do to his wife, will I do unto you. And for this, do not lift your voice in complaint, for it will be to my honour that all who wish me well shall serve you well if you will consent to be the lady of all my wives."[9] The poor wives, we may imagine, had the worst of the bargain. Blanche naturally could not forget that she had been sole Christian queen, the president of the greatest tourney of the age, and her first exaction was that the Moorish Court should kneel to her. Belacin yielded to her every wish, and bade his nobles cheerfully humble themselves. He went so far as to order the palace gates to be closed to those who refused to prostrate themselves before Doña Blanche as she sat in foolish state awaiting their obedience in a lofty chamber, with a crown on her head and a royal mantle about her. How wild and strange this must have seemed to the Moorish wives in their latticed harem, fugitive and hidden articles of pleasure, and what a preposterous innovation in the eyes of the astounded courtiers! This haughty attitude on the part of a captive Christian raised to the Moorish throne by the good nature and affection of a Moor, who might have condemned her to servitude and indignity, so angered the Moors that Isyed, the ruler's son-in-law, spread the report that Belacin had become a Christian, and then murdered the unfortunate as he knelt to pray in the Mezquita.

For a time, Toledo was a secondary town under the Saracens, infatuated as they were with Seville and Cordova. The latter town was chosen as the Khalif's residence and thus became one of the wonders of the world. Meanwhile Toledo stormily sulked. Abandoned to herself, she grew to be a thorn in the Moslem side. No sooner conquered by one chief, she rose up furiously against the next, and in 763, we find Cassim, her Moorish ruler, so far impregnated with Toledan principles of independence, that he declined to recognise the sovereignty of Cordova. So that Abderraman, when he came to rule over the Spanish Arabs, found himself confronted with the necessity of conquering Toledo anew, and was compelled to send a fresh army to besiege it. The old city was by this wearied of Cassim's tyranny and gladly capitulated to the more distant sovereign in 766. When Abderraman came to visit the town in person, he left behind him as wali, his son, Suleiman. But his conquest was an unstable one. Toledo's history at this time is a monotonous tale of broken peace and futile revolt. She yielded to one Moor only to rise up against the next. An Arabian chronicler has asserted that no subjects were ever so mutinous and unruly. But the Moors respected her, not only for her formidable strength, for her ramparts and fortresses, but also for her renown and prestige, for the learning of her prelates and the kingly authority of her great archbishops. And so the old Gothic capital remained for them "the royal city." The popular poet, Gharbib, kept the new Sultan in awe and terror, and was careful to maintain the revolutionary fires blazing in constant menace. As long as he lived, the Sultan did not dare to complain of the haughty and intolerable Toledans, but when he died Hakam summoned up courage to address them as their sovereign, and try a policy of conciliation. He chose for their governor a renegade Christian, one Amron of Huesca, the worst choice he could have made. "You alone can help me to punish these rebels who refuse to acknowledge a Moor for their chief, but who will perhaps submit to one of their own race," he said to Amron, who was officially recognised as governor of Toledo in 807. The Sultan wrote to the Toledans: "By a condescension which proves our extreme solicitude for your interests, instead of sending you one of our own subjects, we have chosen one of your compatriots." The Toledans were speedily to receive immortal proof of the special delicacy of this attention. There exists no more shameless and inconceivable barbarity in the blood-stained pages of history than this same Amron's horrible method of cowing a haughty people. He began with the arts of beguilement, and left nothing undone to win the confidence and affection of the Toledan nobles. He feigned with them an implacable hatred of the Sultan and their conquerors, mysteriously asserted his faith in the national cause--that is Toledo's independence--and by this was able, without exciting suspicion, to quarter soldiers in private houses. Without difficulty he obtained the town's consent to build a strong castle at its extremity as a barrack for his troops, and then, to show their confidence in him, the nobles suggested the very thing he wanted, that the castle should be raised in the middle of the town. When the fortress was built, Amron installed himself therein with a strong guard, and then sent word to the Sultan, whose heart by this was well hardened against the sullen and untameable Toledans. Troops were speedily gathered from other towns, and set marching upon the royal city. The young prince, Abderraman, commanded one wing, and the others were commanded by three vizirs. Amron then persuaded the unfortunate nobles to accompany him to meet the Sultan's son outside the walls. The nobles plumed themselves on their power and value, and gaily set out to visit the young prince, who received them splendidly. After a private consultation with the vizirs, Amron came back to the nobles, whom he found enchanted with the prince's kindness and courtesy, and proposed that they should invite Abderraman to honour the town with his visit. The Toledans applauded the proposition to entertain a prince with whom they were so satisfied in every way. They had a governor of their own nationality, they enjoyed perfect freedom, and Abderraman had personally won them. In their innocence they besought an honour now desired. Abderraman acted the part of coy visitor, delicately apprehensive of giving trouble, but finally yielded to the persuasion of such genial hospitality. He came to the fortified castle, and ordered a great feast to which all the nobles and wealthy citizens of Toledo were invited. The guests came in crowds, but they were only permitted to enter the castle one by one. The order was that they should enter by one gate, and the carriages should round the fortress to await them at another. In the courtyard there was a ditch, and beside it stood the executioners, hatchet in hand, and as each guest advanced, he was felled and rolled into the ditch. The butchery lasted several hours, and the fatal day is ever since known in Spanish history as the _Day of the Foss_. In Toledan legends it has given rise to the proverb _una noche Toledana_, which is lightly enough now applied to any contrariety that produces sleeplessness, headache, or heartache. But only conceive the horrible picture in all its brutal nakedness! The gaily-apparelled guest, scented, jewelled, smiling, alights from his carriage, looking forward to pleasure in varied form; brilliant lights, delicate viands, exquisite wines, lute, song, flowers, sparkling speech. Then the quick entrance into a dim courtyard, a step forward, perhaps in the act of unclasping a silken mantle; the soundless movement of a fatal arm in the shadowy silence, the invisible executioner's form probably hidden by a profusion of tall plants or an Oriental bush, and body after body, head upon head, roll into the common grave till the ditch is filled with nigh upon five thousand corpses. Not even the famous St Bartholomew can compete with this in horror, in gruesomeness. Compared with it, that night of Paris was honourable and open warfare. It is the stillness of the hour, the quickness of doing, the unflinching and awful personality of the executioners, who so remorselessly struck down life as ever it advanced with smiling lip and brightly-glancing eye, that lend this scene its matchless colours of cruelty and savagery. Beside it, few shocking hours in history will seem deprived of all sense of mitigation and humanity.

The place of this monstrous episode is said to have been the famous _Taller del Mora_, now a degraded ruin. Suspicion was first aroused by a doctor, who had strolled out to watch the arrival of all these distinguished citizens come to the feast of the Moorish prince. Having time to kill, he decided to stay and see the departure, but as the hours went by, and no one came out by the door so many had gone in by, while report carried him the fact that the other door had not yet opened for the exit of a single guest, he began to express his fears to the loungers gathered round him to watch for the end of the entertainment. Alarm was quickly spread. Who, after all, were these brilliant strangers but the enemy armed, unscrupulous and powerful? Apprehension was strained to its utmost tension, when the doctor shouted, as all began to perceive the rising of a heavy vapour: "Unfortunates, I swear to you that that vapour is never the smoke of a feast, but that of the blood of our butchered brethren."

Never was a town so completely stupefied by a moment's blow before. Not a single voice was lifted in protest. Toledo, on ordinary occasions, so resentful, proud, rebellious, was simply prostrate from emotion and horror; and in her stunned and terrorised condition the Turk might have done what he willed with her. She was bereft of tears, bereft of reproaches, of will and force. The remaining citizens dared hardly speak of the dreadful occurrence in whispers among themselves, so heavily gripped were they by the nightmare of reality. Now, whether the young prince or the sultan was aware of the Wali's atrocious design remains for ever a mystery. How far were they accomplices? To what extent did they reprove the action? We are told that Amron took Abderraman into his confidence before the feast, and protested loudly in upholding his design as a justifiable measure, since the Toledans were such a harsh and unmanageable race, and its nobles so insupportable and dangerous, and that the young prince demurred to such ruthlessness of method, and begged the Wali to be prudent and not bring unnecessary odium upon Moslem rule. This precisely would seem the deep design of Amron's double treason. Did he wish to accumulate fresh odium on his adopted race, or pay off old scores by one fell blow on his forsaken people? Anyhow, we are glad to learn that he was deservedly punished. After a while the town woke up from its stunned resignation. The Toledans shook themselves out of their trance of horror; met once more in the Zocodover, talked fiercely together, and remembered that they too could be ferocious with less provocation than this last outrage, and from the Zocodover the murmur broke out and travelled along the outlying streets and remote little markets, and down by the river among the armourers and silversmiths. The people rose up, and swooped willingly down upon Amron, and burnt him and his castle. And surely never was vengeance more holy.

But in spite of siege, insurrection, and temporary surrender, which were the constant conditions of public life in Toledo, the town increased, and Moorish influence began to show itself triumphantly in architecture and in horticulture. Gardens spread along the Vega, and Arabian palaces brightened the sombre landscape. Both Jews and Christians were becoming enormously rich, and the Wali, Aben Magot ben Ibraham, decided to raise the tribute of the Christian merchants and persons of means. This was quite enough to quicken the slumbering fires of revolt, and a young Toledan, Hacam, nicknamed _El Durrete_, striker of blows, resolved to expend his great wealth in assisting to fan the flames. Like every other Toledan, he thirsted for an excuse for sedition, and called his fellow-conspirators together in the market-place. There it needed nothing but a judicious use of strong language to induce the people to fling stones and shower blows on the unfortunate palace guard, so handy to the Zocodover, and from blows was only a step to the massacre of all the officials and seizure of the Alcazar. Reprisals naturally followed, and Hacam, routed for the moment, retired to devise a fresh attack. He sent abroad the report that he had gone off to make a raid upon Catalonia, and kept his spies on the look-out for the first signs of relaxed supervision. The instant he found the town-gates unlocked, he poured his men silently into the city at night, and recovered Toledo without a blow, and set fire to the greater part of the upper town. In 834 the sultan sent Omaiga to besiege the seditious town, but the Toledans repulsed him triumphantly, and Hacam was practically the uncrowned king of the city. Skirmishes continued with success, now on one side, now on the other, but always leaving Toledo unsubdued. Maisara, a renegade Spaniard in command of Moslem troops, routed the Toledans outside the walls, and died shortly after his victory, of remorse and shame, when the soldiers, according to a hateful custom, presented him with the heads of the slain.

In 873 discord broke out anew between the renegades and the Christians. A Toledan chief, Ibn Mohâdjir, offered his services to the commander of Calatrava, and Walid, the sultan's brother, was charged to direct the siege, which lasted a year. An envoy of Walid stole secretly into the town, and discovered the famished and weakened state of the inhabitants, urged capitulation, which advice was rejected. But the envoy's report of the people's misery induced Walid to press on a vigorous assault, and once more was Toledo tamed and taken, and Amron's fatal castle rebuilt.

Later fresh troubles hailed from Cordova, whither came Eulogius burning for martyrdom, and exciting the Christians to exasperate the Moslems into persecution. We know that left alone the Spanish Arabs were not in the least given to religious persecution. The Christians were free to practice their religion, and in Toledo lived tranquilly under Mozarabe law. Only the condemned Christian might always appeal from the Mozarabe tribunal to the Moslem Judge, who could grant him immunity. This was no very great hardship, for in general mediæval law made it too easy to kill and too difficult to reprieve. No masters have ever been more tolerant than the Moors, and it needed all the blind and unreasoning fanaticism of Eulogius to discover persecution and a means of forcing martyrdom. The surest method naturally was to revile the False Prophet in public, and insult every instinct and prejudice of the conquerors. This was to prove oneself a saint in those far-off days, while now we should pronounce a distinctly different opinion on such proceedings. So Eulogius, with his lamentable tales, fresh from his romantic parting with the martyred Flora, fired the Toledans with indignation, and again they took up arms under Sindola, arrested their Moorish governors, and sent word to the Sultan at Cordova that his life would answer for that of their fellow-Christians. They declared war, took Calatrava, which the Sultan retook in 757, filed through the Sierra Morena, and defeated the Moors at Andujar. Mohammed assembled his troops and marched against Toledo in June 854, when Sindola turned to Ordoño, king of Leon, for help. The Christian king sent a large army to Toledo under Gaton, Count Bierzo. The Moors, by a false assault and retreat, drew Gaton and the Toledan troops into an ambush, where girdled by Moslem forces, they were massacred to a single man. Over 8000 Christian heads were stuck on the walls of different towns, and for a time was Toledo again cowed. But she took her revenge in electing as archbishop, on Wistremir's death, the Sultan's impassioned enemy, Eulogius, and this time to punish the rebels the Sultan resorted to a stratagem worthy of Amron of the Foss renown. He began to undermine their bridge while his own troops occupied it, and before the operation was completed, he withdrew his men, thus inveigling after them the rash Toledans. The bridge split, and the unfortunate rebels were drowned in a heap in the deep and sullen Tagus. An Arabian poet triumphantly sings the infamy: "The Eternal could not allow a bridge to exist built for the squadrons of miscreants. Deprived of her citizens, Toledo is mournful and desolate as a grave."

But a people that could shake off the nightmare stun of the day of the Foss could rise above this blow. Toledo had resisted for twenty years, and she was not yet conquered. Leon was at her back, and its king was her proclaimed knight. In 873 she forced from the Sultan a treaty acknowledging her as an independent Republic under annual tribute, and concluded an alliance with the famous Beni Casi of Aragon, a great Visigoth family converted to Islamism, who sent Lope, the chief's son, to Toledo as consul.

Then came to the throne of Cordova the great Khalif, Abd-ar-Rahman III., and Toledo was to discover that here was a very different enemy from the incapable generals that had hitherto striven in vain to subdue her. Here was a mighty commander who was not to be daunted by her frowns and her wild spirit, and whose patience and dogged determination she was to find the match of her own. Genius alone could quell her, and genius came in the handsome and valiant young monarch who would win her or die. First he sent a royal order, commanding her to surrender to him her rights as a free and independent Republic, and humbly acknowledge him as liege lord. This Toledo roughly and proudly declined to do. Her reply was couched in terms of evasive menace, for eighty-four years of freedom, under the protection of the Beni Casi of Aragon and the King of Leon, had taught her to regard herself as an enemy to be duly reckoned with. Then the Sultan sent his general vizier, Said-ibn-Moudhir in May 930 to open the siege, and in June he joined him with the flower of his army, and encamped on the banks of Algodor near the Castle of Mora. Here he forced the commander to evacuate, and placed his own garrison in the fortress before advancing on Toledo. He began by camping in the cemetery and burning the outlying villages, and then, in order to show the Toledans the kind of man they had to deal with, he proceeded to build a town on the opposite bank of the Tagus, exactly fronting the royal city, on a mountain side as high as hers. Here he and his troops dwelt for eight years, persistent and unswerving, calling the town he built "Victory" in anticipation of the inevitable result. A siege of eight years! what a tale of magnificent determination and stupendous force of will and endurance on both sides. Which to praise most, wonder most at, the Toledans or Abd-ar-Rahman? What a town, what a Sultan! With such a watchful power outside the walls, the marvel is that famine so long delayed its fatal presence; but it came at last, and stalked the gaunt dim streets and humbled the city of the Goths as no other force or persuasion could have done, and after years of accumulated sufferings and privations, bereft of pride and strength and dignity, she yielded her haggard front to the Sultan's swift assault, as soon as he knew her power undermined, her patience at bay, and by nightfall the heads of her insurgent chiefs were grinning lividly over the Puerta de Visagra.

After the great Khalif's death, the town recovered a partial independence, and remained, until the Christian Conquest, a kingdom apart under the rule of tolerated Arabian princes, independent of Cordova. Successive feeble efforts to win her prove ever unavailing, and she continues to glower above the river in unquiet and mutinous temper, while the princes make believe to rule and do but obey, proud but fearful of so uneasy a charge. Her rulers during the unsatisfactory eleventh century were: Yaîch-ibn-Mohammed-ibn Yaîch, till 1036; Ismail Dhafir, till 1038; Abou-I-Hassan Yah[^y]r Mamon, till 1075; and Yah[^y]a ibn Ismaïl ibn Yah[^y]a Câdir, till the conquest.

The most picturesque episode is that which leads to the downfall of the demoralised Moslems. Alphonso of Leon, escaping from the monastery of Sagahun, fled to Toledo and besought the hospitality and protection of the Moorish King Almamon. The generous and courteous Moor gave him considerably more than shelter; affection and all the outward show of his rank. Persecuted by a Christian brother, he was nobly befriended by a loyal enemy, whose generosity he ill repaid by treachery and ingratitude. Almamon gave him the Castle of Brihuega, and constituted him the chief of the Mozarabes, that is the Christians of Toledo under Moorish rule. Furthermore, he bestowed on him farms and orchards outside the town on the bank of the Tagus, and a residence within the walls near his own Alcazar. At the Moorish court of Tolaitola, as the Arabs called Toledo, the proscribed prince was granted all the honours of his rank. Alcocer tells us that in return Alphonso swore to be loyal, not to leave Toledo without permission, and to fight all men of the world for the Moorish king. Almamon, on his side, swore to treat Alfonso well and faithfully; to pay him and all his people. Alcocer, with quaint garrulity, describes the king's fondness for hunting, and his delight in fresh green places and luxuriant foliage, and his great sadness in looking across from Brihuega to Toledo, and contemplating the possibility of such a strong and beautiful town falling once more into the hands of the Christians. The story runs that one day Almamon visited his guest at Brihuega, and in the gardens the courtiers began to discuss the marvels and attractions of Tolaitola, "that pearl placed in the middle of the necklace, that highest tower of the empire."[10] From this the talk fell upon the probabilities of its being attacked, and at this point Alphonso, lounging beneath a tree, feigned sleep. The Moorish prince described at length the only way of taking the town, and his plan of siege was well remembered by his treacherous guest. The courtiers glancing anxiously at the sleeping prince asked themselves if his sleep were real, and to try him began to pierce one of his hands with shot. Still unconvinced, they begged the king to order him to be killed, but, says Alcocer naively: "Our lord kept him for his greater good, and would not hear of this." When Sancho was murdered by Bellido Dolphos at the foot of the walls of Zamora, Alphonso left this friendly court with the blessings of its sovereign, who offered him money, arms, and horses, and escorted him part of the way as far as Monuela, separating with embraces and vows of eternal friendship on both sides. Both swore never under any circumstances to war on opposite sides, but each to assist the other in all difficulties with hostile powers. Alfonso returned to Toledo, and sent messengers to invite his former host to dinner. The king came, and found himself surrounded by armed men. Demanding the reason of such a strange reception, Alfonso replied, "When you held me in your power you made me swear to assist you against all men, and be your loyal friend." The Moorish king assented, whereupon Alfonso sent for the gospels, and swore upon them again, with Almanon in his power, never to fight against him _or his son_, and to assist him against all the world. Alfonso's word, it will be seen, was strangely flexible. This spontaneous and solemn promise to a friend and ally could, with honour, be broken, while elsewhere his word, compromised by wife and friend, demanded their instant death by fire. Shortly after Almamon died, and Toledo returned to its normal condition of disquiet. Flying kings, invading powers, rivalries and skirmishes, overtures between Moor and Moor, and between Moor and Christian, all terminated by Alphonso's deliberate baseness in laying siege to the town ruled incapably by the incapable son, Yahya, of his late friend and guest, who should have been sacred to him. He followed the plan of siege so unguardedly suggested by Almanon in the gardens of Brihuega, and took the town on the 20th May 1085. Yahya and his court left Toledo, their hardly won and deeply loved Tolaitola, with their treasure, and went towards Cuenca, mournful and silent, eaten by regrets and humiliation.

So Toledo, after three and a half centuries of roughly and persistently disputed Moslem sovereignty, returned to Christian rule. True, she was always less of a Moorish centre than Cordova, Sevilla, Valencia and Granada, and glowed less than these in the bloom of its brilliant civilisation. Her temper was too obstinate and harsh for such flowery development. But she had so far profited as to gather charm to her austere beauty. The aspect of her walls had suffered modification and improvement, and the Moors had built handsome bridges, which alas! have since disappeared, both the bridge near Santa Leocadia, and that across the old Roman waterway. In Dozy, a quotation from the Arabian chronicle, Abou-l-Hasan, tells us how "Alphonso, the tyrant of the Galicians, that infidel people (that God may cut it in pieces!), seized the town of Toledo, that pearl of the necklace, that highest tower of the Empire in this peninsula." He describes Toledo as "a softbed" for Alphonso, and the people "henceforth resembling docile camels." For docility the people were not more remarkable than before, and as for the softness of Toledo as a royal bed, its quality of ease and security never wavered, whoever wore the crown and wielded the sceptre. Alphonso residing "up among her high walls," had his own troubles to face, just as had Cadir, Yahya ibn-Dzin, who gave her up to him. "May God renew her past splendour," cries the Arabian chronicler, "and write her name again on the register of Mussulman towns!"

The weak and unfortunate Yahya accepted Valencia in exchange, which he was not destined long to keep, thanks to that magnificent hero, el mio Cid, the Campeador.