Slight ethnic traces of the Moorish ascend

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There was

We should expect from so long a dom- in the Spanish peninsula. time when under their auspices their capitals in Spain were the intellectual centers of Europe. If some of the Italian cities possessed a greater amount of lore, the Mohammedan cities possessed a greater degree of knowledge. In the palaces of the grandees and oligarchs who had inherited to some extent the treasures of the Roman race in Italy, and among those treasures a considerable portion of the whole intellectual wealth of antiquity, there was doubtless a greater recollection of the past, a greater aggregation of its literary and artistic residue. But in the Spanish Mohammedan capitals of the corresponding age there was a far greater aggregation of that positive and aggressive knowledge which belonged to the future rather than to the past.

ination, and particularly from the splendor and effulgence of the Mohammedan kingdoms of ency left behind. Cordova and Granada, that a large residue of Moorish blood and a still larger trace of Moorish manners and institutions would be left behind as a permanent contribution to the Spanish race. We must here observe, however, that the Arab conquest of Spain was a Semitic movement. Not, indeed, that the Moors were properly Semites, so called; but the Arabs, who were the power behind the invasion, and who constituted the predominant element in the march of Islam westward through Africa and across the Straits into Europe, were out of Shem, and they brought with them the exclusiveness of their race. Like the sons of Israel who had long been a foreign body in the Spanish peninsula, so the sons of Ishmael, though the masters of Spain, continued foreigners; or, if not foreigners, the alienation of race always existed between them and the Visigothic stock of Christians. The struggle between the two races had been from the first religious rather than political. That is, the Arab conquest was the result of the Islamite propaganda in Arabia, Syria, and Europe. There was thus less union between the dominant and the subject race during the times of the Mohammedan ascendency in Spain than has ever happened under like circumstances in any other country, and the final expulsion of the Moors removed to a large extent the ethnic influence of the long dominant people.

mitted to Europe through

Between these cities of Islam in Spain and the far East there was constant intercommunication. What- Learning transever of scientific acumen the polite and astute Arabs Moorish Spain. of Medina, Damascus, and Bagdad possessed was transmitted and replanted for a new development in the brilliant Islamite courts of Spain. It were difficult to say to what extent modern Europe is indebted to the intellectual activity and progress of the Mohammedan peoples during their Spanish evolution. We may say that the larger part of the rudiments of those exact sciences which have taken possession of the intellect and in a large measure directed the energies of modern times had their germinal beds in the scholastic haunts of Cordova, Toledo, and Granada. and Granada. The Arabian system of notation was carried from these intellectual centers to the countries beyond the Pyrenees, and was made the foundation of the mathematical development which was presently to begin its mani

of Charlemagne, the most intellectual and learned monarch of the Dark Ages, both general and schoolmaster of

his people, the Frankish court was touched with these influences

out of Spain. Nor can it be denied that the progress of the physical sciences in the hands of Italian scholars should be referred for many of its primary impulses to the experimentation and deductions of the learned Arabs who frequented the court and adorned the administration of the Moorish kings.

Equally pronounced was the influence of the Arabs in Spain on the architecture of the country and subsequently on that of all Europe and America. That peculiar, halfOriental style of building known as Moresque was introduced at the Moorish capitals and brought to a high degree of per

northern countries, and there became | fection. Scarcely has Europe or any counthe fruitful themes of investigation and try seen a more elaborate and elegant speculative inquiry. Already in the age form of architecture. It may be said to be

Splendor and diffusion of the Moorish architecture.

in the West the representative in tangible | Moorish and Christian settlements were form of the dreamy spirit and illusion of approximate. Constant intercourse was almost a necessity of the situation, and yet hatred was the bottom sentiment with which each regarded the other. The first centuries of the Moorish domination were most peaceful. Afterwards, the relations of the two races became more and more strained, and those perpetual wars ensued which resulted in the ultimate expulsion of the Islamites.

the Oriental builders. So superior was the style that it soon prevailed over the Romanesque and Gothic methods of structure which had hitherto been employed by the Spaniards. The beauty and magnificence of the great buildings which the Moorish architects reared in Spain, especially at Cordova, Toledo, and Granada, gave them a reputation in their own age which subsequent times have ratified and approved. The ruins of the Alhambra are the best preserved specimens of the ancient work of the

nonunion of the Christians and the Islamites.

The ethnic situation in Spain during the greater part of the Middle Ages was one of the most picturesque which has Intercourse but ever been presented. The race prejudices of the Visigothic Spaniards and the Arabs, and more particularly their religious antipathies, prevented such union and amalgamation of the two peoples as might under other circumstances have been expected. Such admixtures, indeed, occurred in all the other countries of Western Europe, with the exception of Great Britain, in which islands the fury of the Saxons was not appeased until the ancient Celtic populations were driven back into the mountains of the west. But in Spain the two peoples continued to live together. In some districts they were actually intermingled, and in most parts of the peninsula the

Christian popu

The first conquerors assumed toward the Christians an attitude of haughty tolerance, and for a while Policy of Islam the subject people bore with toward the equanimity the mastery lations. of Islam. But the elevation of the Crescent and the suppression of the Cross were always grievous facts to the Christian Spaniards. The Mohammedans were quite as zealous in proselyting as were the Christians. They held out to the latter the overtures which the followers of the Prophet always made to the conquered, and in course of time many of the people passed over to the fold of Islam. These were known as Renegades, and were looked upon by the Christian people with horror. apostasy was nearly always incited by self-interest. It was profitable to stand well with those in power.

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