was the sole spiritual leader of the remnant of the native church.1 Up to the same period traces of the survival of Christianity were still to be found among the Kabils of Algeria; these tribes had received some slight instruction in the tenets of Islam at an early period, but the new faith had taken very little hold upon them, and as years went by, they lost even what little knowledge they had at first possessed, so much so that they even forgot the Muslim formula of prayer. Shut up in their mountain fastnesses and jealous of their independence, they successfully resisted the introduction of the Arab element into their midst, and thus the difficulties in the way of their conversion were very considerable. Some unsuccessful attempts to start a mission among them had been made by the inmates of a monastery belonging to the Qādariyah order, Sajiatu-1 Ḥamrā, but the honour of winning an entrance among them for the Muslim faith was reserved for a number of Andalusian Moors who were driven out of Spain after the taking of Granada in 1492. They had taken refuge in this monastery and were recognised by the shaykh to be eminently fitted for the arduous task that had previously so completely baffled the efforts of his disciples. Before dismissing them on this pious errand, he thus addressed them: "It is a duty incumbent upon us to bear the torch of Islam into these regions that have lost their inheritance in the blessings of religion; for these unhappy Kabils are wholly unprovided with schools, and have no shaykh to teach their children the laws of morality and the virtues of Islam; so they live like the brute beasts, without God or religion. To do away with this unhappy state of things, I have determined to appeal to your religious zeal and enlightenment. Let not these mountaineers wallow any longer in their pitiable ignorance of the grand truths of our religion; go and breathe upon the dying fire of their faith and re-illumine its smouldering embers; purge them of whatever errors may still cling to them from their former belief in Christianity; make them understand that in the religion of our Lord Muḥammad-may God have compassion upon him-dirt is not, as in the Christian religion, looked upon as acceptable in the eyes of God. I will not disguise 1 De Mas Latrie, p. 226. 2 C. Trumelet: Les saints de l'Islam (Paris, 1881), p. xxxiii. 3 Compare the articles published by a Junta held at Madrid in 1566, for the reformation of the Moriscoes; one of which runs as follows: "That neither from you the fact that your task is beset with difficulties, but your irresistible zeal and the ardour of your faith will enable you, by the grace of God, to overcome all obstacles. Go, my children, and bring back again to God and His Prophet these unhappy people who are wallowing in the mire of ignorance and unbelief. Go, my children, bearing the message of salvation, and may God be with you and uphold you." The missionaries started off in parties of five or six at a time in various directions; they went in rags, staff in hand, and choosing out the wildest and least frequented parts of the mountains, established hermitages in caves and clefts of the rocks. Their austerities and prolonged devotions soon excited the curiosity of the Kabils, who after a short time began to enter into friendly relations with them. Little by little the missionaries gained the influence they desired through their knowledge of medicine, of the mechanical arts, and other advantages of civilisation, and each hermitage became a centre of Muslim teaching. Students, attracted by the learning of the new-comers, gathered round them and in time became missionaries of Islam to their fellowcountrymen, until their faith spread throughout all the country of the Kabils and the villages of the Algerian Sahara.1 The above incident is no doubt illustrative of the manner in which Islam was introduced among such other sections of the independent tribes of the interior as had received any Christian teaching, but whose knowledge of this faith had dwindled down. to the observance of a few superstitious rites2; for, cut off as they were from the rest of the Christian world and unprovided with spiritual teachers, they could have had little in the way of positive religious belief to oppose to the teachings of the Muslim missionaries. There is little more to add to these sparse records of the decay themselves, their women, nor any other persons should be permitted to wash or bathe themselves either at home or elsewhere; and that all their bathing houses should be pulled down and demolished." (J. Morgan, vol. ii. p. 256.) 1 C. Trumelet: Les Saints de l'Islam, pp. xxviii-xxxvi. 2 Leo Africanus says that at the end of the fifteenth century all the mountaineers of Algeria and of Buggia, though Muhammadans, painted black crosses on their cheeks and palm of the hand. (Ramusio i. p. 61); similarly the Banu Mzab to the present day still keep up some religious observances corresponding to excommunication and confession (Oppel. p. 299), and some nomad tribes of the Sahara observe the practice of a kind of baptism and use the cross as a decoration for their stuffs and weapons. (De Mas Latrie (2), p. 8.) of the North African church. A Muhammadan traveller, who visited Al Jarid, the southern district of Tunis, in the early part of the fourteenth century, tells us that the Christian churches, although in ruins, were still standing in his day, not having been destroyed by the Arab conquerors, who had contented themselves with building a mosque in front of each of these churches. At the end of the following century there was still to be found in the city of Tunis a small community of native Christians, living together in one of the suburbs, quite distinct from that in which the foreign Christian merchants resided; far from being oppressed or persecuted, they were employed as the bodyguard of the Sultan.2 These were doubtless the same persons as were congratulated on their perseverance in the Christian faith by Charles V. after the capture of Tunis in 1535.8 This is the last we hear of the native Christian church in North Africa. The very fact of its so long survival would militate against any supposition of forced conversion, even if we had not abundant evidence of the tolerant spirit of the Arab rulers of the various North African kingdoms, who employed Christian soldiers,* granted by frequent treaties the free exercise of their religion to Christian merchants and settlers,5 and to whom Popes recommended the care of the native Christian population, while exhorting the latter to serve their Muhammadan rulers faithfully.' 3 Pavy, vol. i. p. vii. 6 De Mas Latrie (2), pp. 61-2, 266-7; L. del Marmol-Caravajal; De l'Afrique. Tome ii. p. 54. (Paris, 1667.) De Mas Latrie (2), p. 192. 6 e.g. Innocent III., Gregory VII., Gregory IX. and Innocent IV.. 7 De Mas Latrie (2), p. 273. CHAPTER V. THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIANS OF SPAIN. IN 711 the victorious Arabs introduced Islam into Spain: in 1502 an edict of Ferdinand and Isabella forbade the exercise of the Muhammadan religion throughout the kingdom. During the centuries that elapsed between these two dates, Muslim Spain had written one of the brightest pages in the history of mediæval Europe. She had inaugurated the age of chivalry and her influence had passed through Provence into the other countries of Europe, bringing into birth a new poetry and a new culture, and it was from her that Christian scholars received what of Greek philosophy and science they had to stimulate their mental activity up to the time of the Renaissance. But these triumphs of the civilised life-art and poetry, science and philosophy-we must pass over here and fix our attention on the religious condition of Spain under the Muslim rule. When the Muhammadans first brought their religion into Spain they found Catholic Christianity firmly established after its conquest over Arianism. The sixth Council of Toledo had enacted that all kings were to swear that they would not suffer the exercise of any other religion but the Catholic, and would vigorously enforce the law against all dissentients, while a subsequent law forbade anyone under pain of confiscation of his property and perpetual imprisonment, to call in question the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, the Evangelical Institutions, the definitions of the Fathers, the decrees of the Church, and the Holy Sacraments. The clergy had gained for their order a preponderating influence in the affairs of the State; the bishops and chief ecclesiastics sat in the national councils, which met to 1 Baudissin, p. 22. settle the most important business of the realm, ratified the election of the king and claimed the right to depose him if he refused to abide by their decrees. The Christian clergy took advantage of their power to persecute the Jews who formed a very large community in Spain; edicts of a brutally severe character were passed against such as refused to be baptised1; and they consequently hailed the invading Arabs as their deliverers from such cruel oppression, they garrisoned the captured cities on behalf of the conqueror and opened the gates of towns that were being besieged.2 The Muhammadans received as warm a welcome from the slaves, whose condition under the Gothic rule was a very miserable one, and whose knowledge of Christianity was too superficial to have any weight when compared with the liberty and numerous advantages they gained, by throwing in their lot with the Musalmans. These down-trodden slaves were the first converts to Islam in Spain. The remnants of the heathen population of which we find mention as late as 693 A.D.,3 probably followed their example. Many of the Christian nobles, also, whether from genuine conviction or from other motives, embraced the new creed. Many converts were won, too, from the lower and middle classes, who may well have embraced Islam, not merely outwardly, but from genuine conviction, turning to it from a religion whose ministers had left them ill-instructed and uncared for, and busied with worldly ambitions had plundered and oppressed their flocks. Having once become Muslims, these Spanish converts showed themselves zealous adherents of their adopted faith, and they and their children joined themselves to the Puritan party of the rigid Muhammadan theologians as against the careless and luxurious life of the Arab aristocracy. At the time of the Muhammadan conquest the old Gothic virtues had declined and given place to effeminacy and corruption, so that the Muhammadan rule appeared to Christian theologians to be a punishment sent from God on those who had gone astray into the paths of vice.7 1 Helfferich, p. 68. Baudissin, p. 7. 5 A. Müller, vol. ii. p. 463. 7 So St. Boniface (A.D. 745, Epist. Ixii.) Provinciæ et Burgundionum populis contigit, 2 Al Makkari, vol. i. PP. 280-2. 6 Dozy (2), tome ii. pp. 44-6. -sunt, donec index omnipotens talium criminum ultrices poenas per ignorantiam I |
