The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Volume I Part 27

The Saracens gave an entirely new face to pharmacy and chemistry. They introduced a great variety of salutary medicaments into Europe. The Spanish Arabs, in particular, are commended by Sprengel above their brethren for their observations on the practice of medicine. [41] But whatever real knowledge they possessed was corrupted by their inveterate propensity for mystical and occult science. They too often exhausted both health and fortune in fruitless researches after the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone. Their medical prescriptions were regulated by the aspect of the stars. Their physics were debased by magic, their chemistry degenerated into alchemy, their astronomy into astrology.

In the fruitful field of history, their success was even more equivocal.

They seem to have been wholly dest.i.tute of the philosophical spirit, which gives life to this kind of composition. They were the disciples of fatalism and the subjects of a despotic government. Man appeared to them only in the contrasted aspects of slave and master. What could they know of the finer moral relations, or of the higher energies of the soul, which are developed only under free and beneficent inst.i.tutions? Even could they have formed conceptions of these, how would they have dared to express them? Hence their histories are too often mere barren chronological details, or fulsome panegyrics on their princes, unenlivened by a single spark of philosophy or criticism.

Although the Spanish Arabs are not ent.i.tled to the credit of having wrought any important revolution in intellectual or moral science, they are commended by a severe critic, as exhibiting in their writings "the germs of many theories, which have been reproduced as discoveries in later ages," [42] and they silently perfected several of those useful arts, which have had a sensible influence on the happiness and improvement of mankind. Algebra and the higher mathematics were taught in their schools, and thence diffused over Europe. The manufacture of paper, which, since the invention of printing, has contributed so essentially to the rapid circulation of knowledge, was derived through them. Casiri has discovered several ma.n.u.scripts of cotton paper in the Escurial as early as 1009, and of linen paper of the date of 1106; [43] the origin of which latter fabric Tiraboschi has ascribed to an Italian of Trevigi, in the middle of the fourteenth century. [44] Lastly, the application of gunpowder to military science, which has wrought an equally important revolution, though of a more doubtful complexion, in the condition of society, was derived through the same channel. [45]

The influence of the Spanish Arabs, however, is discernible not so much in the amount of knowledge, as in the impulse, which they communicated to the long-dormant energies of Europe. Their invasion was coeval with the commencement of that night of darkness, which divides the modern from the ancient world. The soil had been impoverished by long, a.s.siduous cultivation. The Arabians came like a torrent, sweeping down and obliterating even the land-marks of former civilization, but bringing with it a fertilizing principle, which, as the waters receded, gave new life and loveliness to the landscape. The writings of the Saracens were translated and diffused throughout Europe. Their schools were visited by disciples, who, roused from their lethargy, caught somewhat of the generous enthusiasm of their masters; and a healthful action was given to the European intellect, which, however ill-directed at first, was thus prepared for the more judicious and successful efforts of later times.

It is comparatively easy to determine the value of the scientific labors of a people, for truth is the same in all languages; but the laws of taste differ so widely in different nations, that it requires a nicer discrimination to p.r.o.nounce fairly upon such works as are regulated by them. Nothing is more common than to see the poetry of the east condemned as tumid, over-refined, infected with meretricious ornament and conceits, and, in short, as every way contravening the principles of good taste. Few of the critics, who thus peremptorily condemn, are capable of reading a line of the original. The merit of poetry, however, consists so much in its literary execution, that a person, to p.r.o.nounce upon it, should be intimately acquainted with the whole import of the idiom in which it is written. The style of poetry, indeed of all ornamental writing, whether prose or verse, in order to produce a proper effect, must be raised or relieved, as it were, upon the prevailing style of social intercourse.

Even where this is highly figurative and impa.s.sioned, as with the Arabians, whose ordinary language is made up of metaphor, that of the poet must be still more so. Hence the tone of elegant literature varies so widely in different countries, even in those of Europe, which approach the nearest to each other in their principles of taste, that it would be found extremely difficult to effect a close translation of the most admired specimens of eloquence from the language of one nation into that of any other. A page of Boccaccio or Bembo, for instance, done into literal English, would have an air of intolerable artifice and verbiage. The choicest morsels of Ma.s.sillon, Bossuet, or the rhetorical Thomas, would savor marvellously of bombast; and how could we in any degree keep pace with the magnificent march of the Castilian! Yet surely we are not to impugn the taste of all these nations, who attach much more importance, and have paid (at least this is true of the French and Italian) much greater attention to the mere beauties of literary finish, than English writers.

Whatever may be the sins of the Arabians on this head, they are certainly not those of negligence. The Spanish Arabs, in particular, were noted for the purity and elegance of their idiom; insomuch that Casiri affects to determine the locality of an author by the superior refinement of his style. Their copious philological and rhetorical treatises, their arts of poetry, grammars, and rhyming dictionaries, show to what an excessive refinement they elaborated the art of composition. Academies, far more numerous than those of Italy, to which they subsequently served for a model, invited by their premiums frequent compet.i.tions in poetry and eloquence. To poetry, indeed, especially of the tender kind, the Spanish Arabs seem to have been as indiscriminately addicted as the Italians in the time of Petrarch; and there was scarcely a doctor in church or state, but at some time or other offered up his amorous incense on the altar of the muse. [46]

With all this poetic feeling, however, the Arabs never availed themselves of the treasures of Grecian eloquence, which lay open before them. Not a poet or orator of any eminence in that language seems to have been translated by them. [47] The temperate tone of Attic composition appeared tame to the fervid conceptions of the east. Neither did they venture upon what in Europe are considered the higher walks of the art, the drama and the epic. [48] None of their writers in prose or verse show much attention to the development or dissection of character. Their inspiration exhaled in lyrical effusions, in elegies, epigrams, and idyls. They sometimes, moreover, like the Italians, employed verse as the vehicle of instruction in the grave and recondite sciences. The general character of their poetry is bold, florid, impa.s.sioned, richly colored with imagery, sparkling with conceits and metaphors, and occasionally breathing a deep tone of moral sensibility, as in some of the plaintive effusions ascribed by Conde to the royal poets of Cordova. The compositions of the golden age of the Aba.s.sides, and of the preceding period, do not seem to have been infected with the taint of exaggeration, so offensive to a European, which distinguishes the later productions in the decay of the empire.

Whatever be thought of the influence of the Arabic on European literature in general, there can be no reasonable doubt that it has been considerable on the Provencal and the Castilian. In the latter especially, so far from being confined to the vocabulary, or to external forms of composition, it seems to have penetrated deep into its spirit, and is plainly discernible in that affectation of stateliness and Oriental hyberbole, which characterizes Spanish writers even at the present day; in the subtilties and conceits with which the ancient Castilian verse is so liberally bespangled; and in the relish for proverbs and prudential maxims, which is so general that it may be considered national. [49]

A decided effect has been produced on the romantic literature of Europe by those tales of fairy enchantment, so characteristic of Oriental genius, and in which it seems to have revelled with uncontrolled delight. These tales, which furnished the princ.i.p.al diversion of the East, were imported by the Saracens into Spain; and we find the monarchs of Cordova solacing their leisure hours with listening to their _rawis_, or novelists, who sang to them.

"Of ladye-love and war, romance, and knightly worth." [50]

The same spirit, penetrating into France, stimulated the more sluggish inventions of the _trouvere_, and, at a later and more polished period, called forth the imperishable creations of the Italian muse. [51]

It is unfortunate for the Arabians, that their literature should be locked up in a character and idiom so difficult of access to European scholars.

Their wild, imaginative poetry, scarcely capable of transfusion into a foreign tongue, is made known to us only through the medium of bald prose translation, while their scientific treatises have been done into Latin with an inaccuracy, which, to make use of a pun of Casiri's, merits the name of perversions rather than versions of the originals. [52] How obviously inadequate, then, are our means of forming any just estimate of their literary merits! It is unfortunate for them, moreover, that the Turks, the only nation, which, from an ident.i.ty of religion and government with the Arabs, as well as from its political consequence, would seem to represent them on the theatre of modern Europe, should be a race so degraded; one which, during the five centuries that it has been in possession of the finest climate and monuments of antiquity, has so seldom been quickened into a display of genius, or added so little of positive value to the literary treasures descended from its ancient masters. Yet this people, so sensual and sluggish, we are apt to confound in imagination with the sprightly, intellectual Arab. Both indeed have been subjected to the influence of the same degrading political and religious inst.i.tutions, which on the Turks have produced the results naturally to have been expected; while the Arabians, on the other hand, exhibit the extraordinary phenomenon of a nation, under all these embarra.s.sments, rising to a high degree of elegance and intellectual culture.

The empire, which once embraced more than half of the ancient world, has now shrunk within its original limits; and the Bedouin wanders over his native desert as free, and almost as uncivilized, as before the coming of his apostle. The language, which was once spoken along the southern sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean and the whole extent of the Indian Ocean, is broken up into a variety of discordant dialects. Darkness has again settled over those regions of Africa, which were illumined by the light of learning.

The elegant dialect of the Koran is studied as a dead language, even in the birth-place of the prophet. Not a printing-press at this day is to be found throughout the whole Arabian Peninsula. Even in Spain, in Christian Spain, alas! the contrast is scarcely less degrading. A death-like torpor has succeeded to her former intellectual activity. Her cities are emptied of the population with which they teemed in the days of the Saracens. Her climate is as fair, but her fields no longer bloom with the same rich and variegated husbandry. Her most interesting monuments are those constructed by the Arabs; and the traveller, as he wanders amid their desolate, but beautiful ruins, ponders on the destinies of a people, whose very existence seems now to have been almost as fanciful as the magical creations in one of their own fairy tales.

Notwithstanding the history of the Arabs is so intimately connected with that of the Spaniards, that it may be justly said to form the reverse side of it, and notwithstanding the amplitude of authentic doc.u.ments in the Arabic tongue to be found in the public libraries, the Castilian writers, even the most eminent, until the latter half of the last century, with an insensibility which can be imputed to nothing else but a spirit of religious bigotry, have been content to derive their narratives exclusively from national authorities. A fire, which, occurred in the Escurial in 1671, having consumed more than three-quarters of the magnificent collection of eastern ma.n.u.scripts which it contained, the Spanish government, taking some shame to itself, as it would appear, for its past supineness, caused a copious catalogue of the surviving volumes, to the number of 1850, to be compiled by the learned Casiri; and the result was his celebrated work, "Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana Escurialensis," which appeared in the years 1760-70, and which would reflect credit from the splendor of its typographical execution on any press of the present day. This work, although censured by some later Orientalists as hasty and superficial, must ever be highly valued as affording the only complete index to the rich repertory of Arabian ma.n.u.scripts in the Escurial, and for the ample evidence which it exhibits of the science and mental culture of the Spanish Arabs. Several other native scholars, among whom Andres and Masdeu may be particularly noticed, have made extensive researches into the literary history of this people.

Still, their political history, so essential to a correct knowledge of the Spanish, was comparatively neglected, until Senor Conde, the late learned librarian of the Academy, who had given ample evidence of his Oriental learning in his version and ill.u.s.trations of the Nubian Geographer, and a Dissertation on Arabic Coins published in the fifth volume of the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of History, compiled his work ent.i.tled "Historia de la Dominacion de los Arabes en Espana." The first volume appeared in 1820.

Bat unhappily the death of its author, occurring in the autumn of the same year, prevented the completion of his design. The two remaining volumes, however, were printed in the course of that and the following year from his own ma.n.u.scripts; and although their comparative meagreness and confused chronology betray the want of the same paternal hand, they contain much interesting information. The relation of the conquest of Granada, especially, with which the work concludes, exhibits some important particulars in a totally different point of view from that in which they had been presented by the princ.i.p.al Spanish historians.

The first volume, which may be considered as having received the last touches of its author, embraces a circ.u.mstantial narrative of the great Saracen invasion, of the subsequent condition of Spain under the viceroys, and of the empire of the Omeyades; undoubtedly the most splendid portion of Arabian annals, but the one, unluckily, which has been most copiously ill.u.s.trated in the popular work compiled by Cardonne from the Oriental ma.n.u.scripts in the Royal Library at Paris. But as this author has followed the Spanish and the Oriental authorities, indiscriminately, no part of his book can be cited as a genuine Arabic version, except indeed the last sixty pages, comprising the conquest of Granada, which Cardonne professes in his Preface to have drawn exclusively from an Arabian ma.n.u.script.

Conde, on the other hand, professes to have adhered to his originals with such scrupulous fidelity, that "the European reader may feel that he is perusing an Arabian author;" and certainly very strong internal evidence is afforded of the truth of this a.s.sertion, in the peculiar national and religious spirit which pervades the work, and in a certain florid gasconade of style, common with the Oriental writers. It is this fidelity that const.i.tutes the peculiar value of Conde's narrative. It is the first time that the Arabians, at least those of Spain, the part of the nation which reached the highest degree of refinement, have been allowed to speak for themselves. The history, or rather tissue of histories, embodied in the translation, is certainly conceived in no very philosophical spirit, and contains, as might be expected from an Asiatic pen, little for the edification of a European reader on subjects of policy and government. The narrative is, moreover, enc.u.mbered with frivolous details and a barren muster-roll of names and t.i.tles, which would better become a genealogical table than a history. But, with every deduction, it must be allowed to exhibit a sufficiently clear view of the intricate conflicting relations of the petty princ.i.p.alities, which swarmed over the Peninsula; and to furnish abundant evidence of a wide-spread intellectual improvement amid all the horrors of anarchy and a ferocious despotism. The work has already been translated, or rather paraphrased, into French. The necessity of an English version will doubtless be in a great degree superseded by the History of the Spanish Arabs, preparing for the Cabinet Cyclopaedia, by Mr. Southey,--a writer, with whom few Castilian scholars will be willing to compete, even on their own ground; and who is, happily, not exposed to the national or religious prejudices, which can interfere with his rendering perfect justice to his subject.

FOOTNOTES

[1] See Introduction, Section I. Note 2, of this History.

[2] The Koran, in addition to the repeated a.s.surances of Paradise to the martyr who falls in battle, contains the regulations of a precise military code. Military service in some shape or other is exacted from all. The terms to be prescribed to the enemy and the vanquished, the division of the spoil, the seasons of lawful truce, the conditions on which the comparatively small number of exempts are permitted to remain at home, are accurately defined. (Sale's Koran, chap. 2, 8, 9, et alibi.) When the _algihed_, or Mahometan crusade, which, in its general design and immunities, bore a close resemblance to the Christian, was preached in the mosque, every true believer was bound to repair to the standard of his chief. "The holy war," says one of the early Saracen generals, "is the ladder of Paradise. The Apostle of G.o.d styled himself the son of the sword. He loved to repose in the shadow of banners and on the field of battle."

[3] The successors, caliphs or vicars, as they were styled, of Mahomet, represented both his spiritual and temporal authority. Their office involved almost equally ecclesiastical and military functions. It was their duty to lead the army in battle, and on the pilgrimage to Mecca.

They were to preach a sermon, and offer up public prayers in the mosques every Friday. Many of their prerogatives resemble those a.s.sumed anciently by the popes. They conferred invest.i.tures on the Moslem princes by the symbol of a ring, a sword, or a standard. They complimented them with the t.i.tles of "defender of the faith," "column of religion," and the like. The proudest potentate held the bridle of their mules, and paid his homage by touching their threshold with his forehead. The authority of the caliphs was in this manner founded on opinion no less than on power; and their ordinances, however frivolous or iniquitous in themselves, being enforced, as it were, by a divine sanction, became laws which it was sacrilege to disobey. See D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, (La Haye, 1777-9,) voce _Khalifah_.

[4] The character of the Arabs before the introduction of Islam, like that of most rude nations, is to be gathered from their national songs and romances. The poems suspended at Mecca, familiar to us in the elegant version of Sir William Jones, and still more, the recent translation of "Antar," a composition indeed of the age of Al Raschid, but wholly devoted to the primitive Bedouins, present us with a lively picture of their peculiar habits, which, notwithstanding the influence of a temporary civilization, may be thought to bear great resemblance to those of their descendants at the present day.

[5] Startling as it may be, there is scarcely a vestige of any of the particulars, circ.u.mstantially narrated by the national historians (Mariana, Zurita, Abarca, Moret, etc.) as the immediate causes of the subversion of Spain, to be found in the chronicles of the period. No intimation of the persecution, or of the treason, of the two sons of Witiza is to be met with in any Spanish writer, as far as I know, until nearly two centuries after the conquest; none earlier than this, of the defection of Archbishop Oppas, during the fatal conflict near Xerez; and none of the tragical amours of Roderic and the revenge of count Julian, before the writers of the thirteenth century. Nothing indeed can be more jejune than the original narratives of the invasion. The continuation of the Chronicon del Biclarense, and the Chronicon de Isidoro Pacense or de Beja, which are contained in the voluminous collection of Florez, (Espana Sagrada, tom. vi. and viii.) afford the only histories contemporary with the event. Conde is mistaken in his a.s.sertion (Dominacion de los Arabes, Prol. p. vii.), that the work of Isidoro de Beja was the only narrative written during that period. Spain had not the pen of a Bede or an Eginhart to describe the memorable catastrophe. But the few and meagre touches of the contemporary chroniclers have left ample scope for conjectural history, which has been most industriously improved.

The reports, according to Conde, (Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. p.

36,) greedily circulated among the Saracens, of the magnificence and general prosperity of the Gothic monarchy, may sufficiently account for its invasion by an enemy flushed with uninterrupted conquests, and whose fanatical ambition was well ill.u.s.trated by one of their own generals, who, on reaching the western extremity of Africa, plunged his horse into the Atlantic, and sighed for other sh.o.r.es on which to plant the banners of Islam. See Cardonne, Histoire de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne sous la Domination des Arabes, (Paris, 1765,) tom. i. p. 37.

[6] The laborious diligence of Masdeu may be thought to have settled the epoch, about which so much learned dust has been raised. The fourteenth volume of his Historia Critica de Espana y de la Cultura Espanola (Madrid, 1783-1805) contains an accurate table, by which the minutest dates of the Mahometan lunar year are adjusted by those of the Christian era. The fall of Roderic on the field of battle is attested by both the domestic chroniclers of that period, as well as by the Saracens. (Incerti Auctoris Additio ad Joannem Biclarensem, apud Florez, Espana Sagrada, tom. vi. p.

430.--Isidori Pacensis Episcopi Chronicon, apud Florez, Espana Sagrada, tom. viii. p. 290.) The tales of the ivory and marble chariot, of the gallant steed Orelia and magnificent vestments of Roderic, discovered after the fight on the banks of the Guadalete, of his probable escape and subsequent seclusion among the mountains of Portugal, which have been thought worthy of Spanish history, have found a much more appropriate place in their romantic national ballads, as well as in the more elaborate productions of Scott and Southey.

[7] "Whatever curses," says an eye-witness, whose meagre diction is quickened on this occasion into something like sublimity, "whatever curses were denounced by the prophets of old against Jerusalem, whatever fell upon ancient Babylon, whatever miseries Rome inflicted upon the glorious company of the martyrs, all these were visited upon the once happy and prosperous, but now desolated Spain." Pacensis Chronicon, apud Florez, Espana Sagrada, tom. viii. p. 292.

[8] The frequency of this alliance may be inferred from an extraordinary, though, doubtless, extravagant statement cited by Zurita. The amba.s.sadors of James II., of Aragon, in 1311, represented to the sovereign pontiff, Clement V., that, of the 200,000 souls, which then composed the population of Granada, there were not more than 500 of pure Moorish descent. a.n.a.les, tom. iv. fol. 314.

[9] The famous persecutions of Cordova under the reigns of Abderrahman II.

and his son, which, to judge from the tone of Castilian writers, might vie with those of Nero and Diocletian, are admitted by Morales (Obras, tom. x.

p. 74) to have occasioned the destruction of only forty individuals. Most of these unhappy fanatics solicited the crown of martyrdom by an open violation of the Mahometan laws and usages. The details are given by Florez, in the tenth volume of his collection.

[10] Bleda, Coronica de los Moros de Espana, (Valencia, 1618,) lib. 2, cap. 16, 17.--Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. i. pp. 83 et seq. 179.--Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, Prol., p. vii. and tom. i. pp.

29-54, 75, 87.--Morales, Obras, tom. vi. pp. 407-417; tom. vii. pp. 262- 264.--Florez, Espana Sagrada, tom. x. pp. 237-270.--Fuero Juzgo, Int. p.

40.

[11] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, part. 2, cap. 1-46.

[12] Ibid., ubi supra.--Masdeu, Historia Critica, tom. xiii. pp. 178, 187.

[13] The same taste is noticed at the present day, by a traveller, whose pictures glow with the warm colors of the east. "Aussi des que vous approchez, en Europe ou en Asie, d'une terre possedee par les Musulmans, vous la reconnaissez de loin au riche et sombre voile de verdure qui flotte gracieus.e.m.e.nt sur elle:--des arbres pour s'a.s.seoir a leur ombre, des fontaines jaillissantes pour rever a leur bruit, du silence et des mosquees aux legers minarets, s'elevant a chaque pas du sein d'une terre pieuse." Lamartine, Voyage en Orient, tome i. p. 172.

[14] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. pp. 199, 265, 284, 285, 417, 446, 447, et alibi.--Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. i. pp.

227-230 et seq.

[15] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. pp. 211, 212, 226.-- Swinburne, Travels through Spain, (London, 1787,) let. 35.--Xerif Aledris, conocido por El Nubiense, Descripcion de Espana, con Traduccion y Notas de Conde, (Madrid, 1799,) pp. 161, 162.--Morales, Obras, tom. x. p. 61.-- Chenier, Recherches Historiques sur les Maures, et Histoire de l'Empire de Maroc, (Paris, 1787,) tom. ii. p. 312.--Laborde, Itineraire, tome iii. p.

226.

[16] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. pp 214, 228, 270, 611.-- Masdeu, Historia Critica, tom. xiii. p. 118.--Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. i. pp. 338-343.--Casiri quotes from an Arabic historian the conditions on which Abderrahman I. proffered his alliance to the Christian princes of Spain, viz. the annual tribute of 10,000 ounces of gold, 10,000 pounds of silver, 10,000 horses, etc., etc. The absurdity of this story, inconsiderately repeated by historians, if any argument were necessary to prove it, becomes sufficiently manifest from the fact, that the instrument is dated in the 142d year of the Hegira, being a little more than fifty years after the conquest. See Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana Escurialensis, (Matriti, 1760,) tom. ii. p. 104.

[17] Hist. Naturalis, lib. 33, cap. 4.

[18] Introduction a l'Histoire Naturelle de l'Espagne, traduite par Flavigny, (Paris, 1776,) p. 411.

[19] See a sensible essay by the Abbe Correa da Serra on the husbandry of the Spanish Arabs, contained in tom. i. of Archives Litteraires de l'Europe, (Paris, 1804.)--Masdeu, Historia Critica, tom. xiii. pp. 115, 117, 127, 131.--Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. cap. 44.--Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. i. p. 338.

An absurd story has been transcribed from Cardonne, with little hesitation, by almost every succeeding writer upon this subject. According to him, (Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. i. p. 338,) "the banks of the Guadalquivir were lined with no less than twelve thousand villages and hamlets." The length of the river, not exceeding three hundred miles, would scarcely afford room for the same number of farm-houses. Conde's version of the Arabic pa.s.sage represents twelve thousand hamlets, farms, and castles, to have "been scattered over the regions watered by the Gaudalquivir;" indicating by this indefinite statement nothing more than the extreme populousness of the province of Andalusia.

[20] Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. pp. 38, 202.--Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, part. 2, cap. 88.

[21] Storia della Letteratura Italiana, (Roma, 1782-97,) tom. iii. p.

231.--Turner, History of the Anglo-Saxons, (London, 1820,) vol. iii. p.

137.--Andres, Dell' Origine, de' Progressi e dello Stato Attuale d'Ogni Letteratura, (Venezia, 1783,) part. 1, cap. 8, 9.--Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 149.--Masdeu, Historia Critica, tom. xiii. pp.

165, 171.--Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, part. 2, cap. 93.--Among the accomplished women of this period, Valadata, the daughter of the caliph Mahomet, is celebrated as having frequently carried away the palm of eloquence in her discussions with the most learned academicians. Others again, with an intrepidity that might shame the degeneracy of a modern _blue_, plunged boldly into the studies of philosophy, history, and jurisprudence.