Old Court Life in Spain (Vol.1&2). Frances Minto Elliot

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      CHAPTER IX

       The Moors at Seville—Mousa and Abdul-asis

       Table of Contents

      EANWHILE the great Emir Mousa is moved by fierce jealousy of the success of Tháryk of the one-eye. Not only had he overrun the mountains of the Moon and conquered Granada, but the city of Toledo, the capital of Northern Spain, was opened to him by the Jews.

      This is too much to bear from an inferior. Swift messengers are despatched across the Straits to bid him wait until Mousa arrives. He laughs to scorn the message, and battles as before, his light squadrons penetrating farther and farther into the north of Spain.

      Mousa had many sons, but history concerns itself with one only, by name Abdul-asis, pale-skinned, with large romantic eyes and a too tender heart. Abdul-asis sailed with his father across the Straits, and a great army of Moors and illustrious emirs accompanied them.

      “By the head of the Prophet,” quoth Mousa, as he consulted the map of Spain, “that hireling of the one-eye has left us no land to conquer. He is a glutton, who eateth all.” But on a more minute examination, it was found that there was still room in the vast country of Spain for earning further laurels. Tháryk had as yet left Andalusia unconquered.

      Andalusia! the very name is poetry—mystic, unfathomed, vague! Reaching far back into fabulous ages where history cannot follow! The home of jonglerie, magic, and song! Would that I could paint the turquoise of its skies, the endless purple of its boundless plains, the dusky shade of orange and myrtle woods dashed with the vivid green!

      What art! what knowledge! And the sensuous charm of a heavenly climate, where winter is never known, and spring passes into summer without a struggle; a land loved by the veiled beauties of the East, looking down through shadows of the fretted miradores, marble galleries, and patios, on barbican towers and Roman walls!

      And what a people, cloudless in temper as the heavens! To love flowers, to dance seguidillas, and oles, and to tell tales, that is your Andalusian—grouped in circles anywhere, under a hedge or a plane-tree, on a grassy knoll, in gilded halls, or beneath painted arches. A happy, thoughtless race at all times, taking life and conquest as it comes.

      If Andalusia is left to Mousa, Tháryk has lost the fairest jewel of Spain.

      Abdul-asis spoke to his father.

      “My lord and father,” he said, “as yet I have done nothing to deserve a sword. Behold, when my service is over, and I return to Egypt and appear before the Sultan, what will he say when I answer that I have gained no battle, and taken no city or castle? Good my father, if you love me, grant me some command, and let me gain a name worthy of your son.”

      To this Mousa answered: “Allah be praised! The heart of Abdul-asis beats in the right place. Your desire, my son, shall be granted. While I go north, to besiege Merida, you shall march southwards. Seville has defeated the Moors, and quartered Christian troops in the barbican. Be it your care to drive out these unbelieving dogs, and plant once more the Crescent on the Giralda tower. Reduce the city, and spoil the land. Then pass southward, and conquer the province of Murcia, where the Gothic Teodomir defends himself with a handful of troops.”

      When Abdul-asis, who read the Persian poets and had himself tried his hand at verse, came in sight of beautiful Seville, lying like a white lily surrounded by the shadows of dark woods, he sighed:

      “Alas! is it for me,” he said, “to bring destruction upon so fair a scene? Why am I come to dye with blood those flowery groves, and burden the tide of the Guadalquivir with corpses? Alas! why did not my father choose some place less lovely on which to bring ruin than this the palm-crowned queen of cities!”

      Thus mourned Abdul-asis, but not so the fiery Africans whom he commanded. They gazed on the walls with wrath, and longed to flesh their scimitars in Christian blood.

      It was with the utmost difficulty that the merciful Abdul-asis stopped the massacre when the city fell. It pained his gentle heart, for its many beauties, especially the palm-planted gardens of the Alcazar, vocal with purling streams and bubbling fountains, so dear to the Arab fancy.

      “Here,” thought Abdul-asis, as he wandered among the myrtle-bordered paths, fragrant with jasmine and violet, “is the paradise promised to the faithful, but where are the houris, whose white embraces are to make it sweet?” Neither did the voluptuous movements of the dancing girls (for Seville in all ages has been famed for the baile), moving with uplifted arms and quivering limbs in the vito or the zapateado, intoxicate his senses; nor did the voices of the young niñas, chanting the malagueñas to cither and lute, draw him from the poetic melancholy which possessed his soul, as he turned his steps from alley to alley, not having yet found the ideal of which he was in search.

      But the son of Mousa was a warrior, though the gods had made him poetical. He could not long be idle, and hastened to fulfil the second mission confided to him by Mousa—to overcome the far-off province of Murcia.

      Another faithful knight who had survived the battle of the Guadalete was Teodomir, who, by skilful management had entrenched himself in Murcia. Not only brave, but singularly prudent, Teodomir had observed that to oppose the Moors openly in the field was to ensure defeat, therefore he had fortified as best he could, every wild recess of the rocky hills lying toward the coast, and every rise and knoll whence he could shoot down arrows and missiles. So that when Abdul-asis appeared in the land, cleft asunder by wide rivers and divided by swamps and flats, he encountered no enemy.

      “This is a blind warfare,” he cried, “a war without a foe. What manner of man is this Goth who wages war in the clouds, and with a few raw troops holds my army in check?”

      With a grim smile Teodomir marked the success of his tactics. Spies told him that, in the council of Abdul-asis, retreat had already been mooted, and more and more he insisted upon giving his enemy no chance in the open.

      Not so his sons. “What glory is there here?” say these youths. “Let us go forth and face him. We are as good as he. If our men are less disciplined, courage makes up the balance.”

      “Fools,” answered old Teodomir, laying his wrinkled hands upon them, and drawing them to him, that he might make them if possible understand his counsels. “Glory dazzles from afar, but safety is the best when a foe knocks at the door.”

      Continued dropping wears a stone. To his great joy, as the sun rose and the weary eyes of handsome Abdul-asis turned towards the marshy plains, he beheld Teodomir riding onwards towards the camp at the head of his troops, a son on either hand, the old Goth in the centre in shining armour, with nodding plumes, preceded by flags and horsemen.