Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/431

287 THE SPANISH ARABS. 287 petty principalities ; and their magnificent capital of chapter Cordova, dwindling into a second-rate city, retained no other distinction than that of being the Mecca of Spain. These little states soon became a prey to all the evils arising out of a vicious constitution of government and religion. Almost every acces- sion to the throne was contested by numerous com- petitors of the same family ; and a succession of sovereigns, wearing on their brows but the sem- blance of a crown, came and departed, like the shadows of Macbeth. The motley tribes of Asi- atics, of whom the Spanish Arabian population was composed, regarded each other with ill-disguised jealousy. The lawless, predatory habits, which no discipline could effectually control in an Arab, made them ever ready for revolt. The Moslem states, thus reduced in size and crippled by faction, were unable to resist the Christian forces, which were pressing on them from the north. By the middle of the ninth century, the Spaniards had reached the Douro and the Ebro. By the close of the eleventh, they had advanced their line of conquest, under the victorious banner of the Cid, to the Tagus. The swarms of Africans who invaded the Peninsula, during the two following centuries, gave substantial support to their Mahometan brethren ; and the cause of Christian Spain trembled in the balance for a moment on the memorable day of Navas de Tolosa. But the fortunate issue of that battle, in 1212. which, according to the lying letter of Alfonso the Ninth, " one hundred and eighty-five thousand infi- dels perished, and only five and twenty Spaniards,"