The Spanish Roman and Visigoth, accustomed as he was to com pound with one master after another, saw nothing dishonourable in making such an arrangement. In Murcia the duke whom the Arabs knew as Tadmir became a tributary prince, and his family retained the principality for generations. The family of Witiza obtained possession of an immense stretch of the land of the State in Andalusia on condition of paying tribute. One of them, by name Ardabast, was deprived of his holding at a later date on the ground that he held more land than could be safely left in the hands of a Christian. Everywhere landowners made the bargain, and the monasteries and the cities followed their example. Many professed themselves converts to Mohammedanism. In the north one great Visigoth family not only accepted Islam, but founded a dynasty, with its capital at Saragossa, which played a stirring part in the 8th and 9th centuries, the Beni-Casi, or Beni-Lope. To the mass of the population the conquest was, for the present, a pure gain. The Jews, escaped from brutal persecution, were the eager allies of the Arabs. The serfs acquired personal freedom and relief from the Roman fiscal system. Add to this that a slave who professed Islam could secure his freedom, at least from slav ery to a Christian master, that Arianism had not been quite rooted out, that the country districts were still largely pagan, and it will not appear wonderful that within a generation Mohammedan Spain was full of renegades. The Arabs at first were content to take a fifth of the land to constitute the public domain, or khoms, out of which fiefs held on military tenure were provided for the chiefs of the conquering army.
The invaders were a coalition of Arabs, Syrians and Berbers. The Arabs, incurably anarchical, with no political idea except the tribal one, looked down on the Syrian ; they thought the Berber a lout and a plebeian, they scorned the renegade, and called him a slave and son of a slave. They fought out the old tribal rivalries of Arabia on the banks of the Guadalquivir and on the Vega of Granada. They planted the Berber down on the bleak, ill-watered and wind-swept central plateau. He revolted, and they strove to subdue him by the sword. He deserted his poor share of the con quered land, and in many cases returned to Africa. The conflict for the caliphate (q.v.) between Omayyad and Abbasid removed all shadow of control by the head of the Mohammedan world, and Spain was given up to mere anarchy. The treaties made with the Christians were soon violated, and it seemed as if Islam would destroy itself. From that fate it was preserved by the arrival in Spain of Abdurrahman (Abdarrahman b. Moawiya) the Omayyad (758), one of the few princes of his house who escaped massacre at the hands of the Abbasides. With the help of his clansmen among the Arabs, and to a large extent of the renegades who counted as his clients, by craft, by the sword, by keeping down the fanatical Berber element, and by forming a mercenary army of African negroes, and after 3o years of blood and battle, Abdur rahman founded the independent amirate, which in the loth cen tury became the caliphate of Cordova. The real basis of its power was the slave army of negroes, or of Christian slaves, largely Slavonians sold by their German captors to the Jew slave traders of Verdun, and by them brought to Spain. These janissaries at first gave them victory, and then destroyed them.
Christian States of the North.—The Christian enemies of the Mohammedans were for long weak and no less anarchical than themselves, but they were never altogether wanting, and they had, what the Arab and Berber had not, a tradition of law and a capac ity for forming an organized polity and a State. In the centre were
the Basques, dwelling on both sides of the Pyrenees, who kept against the Mohammedan the independence they had vindicated against the Visigoth. On the east were the roots of the kingdom of Navarre, of Sobrarbe and Aragon. In the earliest times their most pressing foe was not the Arab or Berber so much as the Caro lingian. It was at their hands that Charlemagne (q.v.), while re turning from his expedition to Saragossa, suffered that disaster to his rearguard at Roncesvalles which is more famous in poetry than important in history. With the aid of the Spanish Muslim Beni Casi the Basques drove off the counts and wardens of the marches of the Carolingians. On the eastern extremity of the Pyrenees the Franks found no native free population. Here, mainly under the leadership of Louis the Pious, they formed the Marca Hispan ica, where Frankish counts and wardens of the marches gradually gained ground. By the reign of Charles the Fat a principality had been founded. Wilfred the Hairy—the Comes Vellosus, so called because his countship was poor and covered with scrub wood— became the founder of the countship of Barcelona.
The greatest destiny was reserved for the Christian remnant which stood out to the west of the Basques, in the mountains of Asturias. Pelayo, whom they chose for king, and his victory of Covadonga, are legendary and obscure. It is with the warning that the dates can only be given as probably correct that the three first Christian kings can be said to have reigned from 718 to 757. Pelayo (718-737), his brother Favila (737-739)—of whom Are only know that he is said to have been killed by a bear while hunting—and Alphonso I., the Catholic (739-757), stand as little more than names. While the Muslim invasion of Gaul was still going on, Manuza, the chief of the Berbers settled in north western Spain, had revolted against the caliph's lieutenants. In 740 came the great general revolt of the Berbers. In 75o plague, following on drought and famine, swept away thousands of con quered and conquerors alike. Amid the general desolation Alphon so I., duke of Cantabria and son-in-law of Pelayo, constituted the kingdom which the Arabs called Galicia. It answered closely to the old Roman province of the same name—extending from the Bay of Biscay to the line of the Duero, from the ocean to the foot of the mountains of Navarre. Alphonso swept all through that region, already more than half depopulated, slaying the lin gering remnants of the Berbers, and carrying back the surviving Christians to the north. Behind that shield of waste the Christian kingdom developed ; from the death of Alphonso I. to the reign of Ramiro II. (931-95o) it was subject to no serious attack, though raids on the frontier never ceased. Norse pirates appeared on the coast in the 9th century, but made no permanent settlements. As the population grew, it pushed down to the plain of Leon and Castile. The advance is marked by the removals of the capital forward from Cangas de Ofia to Oviedo, from Oviedo to Leon, and by the settlement of adventurous frontier men in the ancient Bardulia, which from their "peels," and towers of strength, gained the name of Castilla—the castles. Burgos became its centre. The Montana (hill country) of Burgos, and in particular the district called the Alf oz of Lara, was the cradle of the heroes of the Cas tilian share in the reconquest. As the Marca Hispanica on the east became the county of Barcelona, so the chiefs of Bardulia became the counts of Castile, then the count of Castile, the rival of the king at Leon, and in time the king of Castile, and head of Christian Spain.