THE STORY OF THE NATIONS
THE MOORS IN SPAIN
BY
STANLEY LANE-POOLE, B.A., M.R.A.S.
AUTHOR OF "THE BARBARY CORSAIRS,"
"TURKEY," "SALADIN," ETC.
WITH THE COLLABORATION OF
ARTHUR GILMAN, M.A.
AUTHOR OF "A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE," "THE STORY OF
ROME," "THE STORY OF THE SARACENS," ETC.
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NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
1903
COPYRIGHTBY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
1886
Ent ered at Stationers' Hall, LondonBY T. FISHER UNWIN
| Preface. Contents. List of Illustrations. Chronological Table. Index to the Text and the Notes Footnotes |
PREFACE.
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THE history of Spain offers us a melancholy contrast.Twelve hundred years ago, Tarik the Mooradded the land of the Visigoths to the long catalogueof kingdoms subdued by the Moslems. For nearlyeight centuries, under her Mohammedan rulers, Spainset to all Europe a shining example of a civilizedand enlightened State. Her fertile provinces, rendereddoubly prolific by the industry and engineering skillof her conquerors, bore fruit an hundredfold. Citiesinnumerable sprang up in the rich valleys of theGuadalquivir and the Guadiana, whose names, andnames only, still commemorate the vanished gloriesof their past. Art, literature, and science prospered,as they then prospered nowhere else in Europe.Students flocked from France and Germany andEngland to drink from the fountain of learning whichflowed only in the cities of the Moors. The surgeonsand doctors of Andalusia were in the van of science:women were encouraged to devote themselves toserious study,