Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/416

272 272 THE SPANISH ARABS. PART sufficient to say, that these latter, within a century '. after the coming of their apostle, having succeeded in establishing their religion over vast regions in Asia, and on the northern shores of Africa, arrived before the Straits of Gibraltar, which, though a temporary, were destined to prove an ineffectual bulwark for Christendom. Conquest Thc causcs which have been currently assigned of Spaui. •' ~ for the invasion and conquest of Spain, even by the most credible modern historians, have scarcely any foundation in contemporary records. The true causes are to be found in the rich spoils offered by the Gothic monarchy, and in the thirst of enter- prise in the Saracens, which their long uninter- rupted career of victory seems to have sharpened, rather than satisfied. ^ The fatal battle, which before the introduction of Islam, secution, or of the treason, of the like that of most rude nations, is two sons of Witiza is to be met to be gathered from their national with in any Spanish writer, as far songs and romances. The poems as I know, until nearly two cen- suspended at Mecca, familiar to turies after the conquest ; none us in the elegant version of Sir earlier than this, of the defection William Jones, and still more, the of archbishop Oppas, during the recent translation of " Antar," a fatal conflict near Xerez ; and composition indeed of the age of none, of the tragical amours of Al Raschid, but wholly devoted Roderic and the revenge of count to the primitive Bedouins, present Julian, before the writers of the us with a lively picture of their thirteenth century. Nothing in- peculiar habits, which, notwith- deed can be more jejune than the standing the influence of a tem- original narratives of the invasion, porary civilization, may be thought The continuation of the Chronicon to bear great resemblance to those del Biclarense, and the Chronicon of their descendants at the present de Isidoro Pacense or de Beja, day. which are contained in the volu- 5 Startling as it may be, there minous collection of Florez, (Es- is scarcely a vestige of any of the pafia Sagrada, tom. vi. and viii.) particulars, circumstantially nar- afford the only histories contem- rated by the national historians porary with the event. Conde is (Mariana, Zurita, Abarca, Moret, mistaken in his assertion (Domi- &c.) as the immediate causes of nacion de los Arabes,Pr61. p. vii.), the subversion of Spain, to be that the work of Isidore de Beja found in the chronicles of the was the only narrative written period. No intimation of the per- during that period. Spain had