Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/76

 edifices, and the remains of a sewer are supposed to indicate the site of Car- thage. The warlike enthusiasm of the Saracens was better adapted for making conquests than for preserving them. The great distance from the seat of em- pire, the revolutions caused by rival houses contending for the caliphate, the ambitious projects of the viceroys inclining them to league with native chiefs, led to a dissolution of the Arabian power in Northern Africa. Consequently, when the dawn of modern history begins to throw a clearer light upon the scene, we find the territory divided into a number of petty sovereignties.

The Saracens in Africa intermixing with the barbarous native tribes, never reached the high position in the arts of peace and civilization attained by their brethren, the conquerors of Spain. The devastating instinct of Islamism seems to have yielded to a more benign influence, as soon as it entered Europe. When Spain was thoroughly subdued, the natives were permitted, with but few restrictions, the full enjoyment of their own laws and religion ; and the Arabs, enjoying almost peaceable possession for nearly three centuries after the con- quest, devoted their fiery energies to the acquisition of knowledge. Enriched by a fertile soil and prosperous commerce, they blended the acquirements and refinements of intellectual culture with Arabian luxury and magnificence ; the palaces of their princes were radiant with splendor, their colleges famous for learning, their libraries overflowing with books, their agricultural and manufacturing processes conducted with scientific accuracy, when all the rest of Europe was buried in midnight barbarism. To those halcyon days of comparative peace succeeded four centuries of bitter conflict between the invaders and the invaded, exhibiting one of the grandest romances of military history on record. It was long doubtful on which side the honors of victory would descend. At last, the ardor and audacity of the Mussulman succumbed to the patriotic cour- age of the Christian, and the reluctant Moor was compelled to abandon the lovely region he had rendered classical by the exercise of his peculiar taste and genius.

Immediately after the fall of Granada in 1492, about 100,000 Spanish Moors passed over into Africa with their unfortunate king, Boabdil. Some ruined and deserted cities on the sea-coast, the remains of Carthaginian and Roman power and enterprise, were allotted to the exiles ; for though of the same religion, and almost of the same race and language as the people they sought refuge amongst, yet they were strangers in a strange land ; the African Moors termed them Tigarins (Andalucians) ; they dwelt and intermarried together, and were long known to Europeans, in the lingua franca of the Mediterranean, by the appellation of Moriscos. At the period of this forced migration, the Barbary Moors knew nothing of navigation ; what little commerce they had was carried on by the ships of Cadiz, Genoa, and Ragusa. But the Moriscos, confined to the sea-coast, and debarred from agriculture, had no sooner rendered the ancient ruins habitable, than they turned their attention to naval affairs. Build- ing row-boats, carrying from fourteen to twenty-six oars, they boldly put to sea, and incited by feelings of the deadliest enmity, revenged themselves on the