Moorish people

“ This kingdom is of the Moors, and has a Moorish king, a great lord; and in former times this kingdom was of the Gentiles, of whom there are still many who live amidst the Moors, with much vexation. And many of them nobles and respectable people, not to be subject to the Moors, go out of the kingdom and take the habit of poverty, wandering the world; and they never settle in any country until their death ”

“ Educated by two Moorish preceptors, under the superintendence of a cardinal,—a curious circumstance which indicates that infidel learning had not yet entirely succumbed to ecclesiastical prejudice,—he in time became proficient in all the arts and accomplishments possessed by that remarkable people whose erudition and industry were admired and feared by the dominant race whose members the fortune of arms had made the depositaries of power and the interpreters of orthodoxy. ”

“ In this city there reside many very wealthy Moorish merchants, and all the trade is in their hands.313 They have a fine mosque314 in the square of the town. The king is, as it were, governed by these Moors because of the presents which they give him; and owing to their industry315 the government is wholly in their hands, for these Christians are coarse people. ”

“ The capital of each principality became a centre of culture, of learning, of the arts. The rulers of these petty states, whose population still retained, amidst the turbulent scenes of civil discord and foreign encroachment, no small measure of that intelligence and taste which had so eminently distinguished their fathers, vied with each other in their encouragement of science and in their patronage of learned men. In this noble emulation, as well as in their own scholastic acquirements, the Moorish princes maintained the fame of their ancestors and the traditions of the monarchy. ”

“ Moors, a general term for tribes in North Africa descended from Arab and Berber stock; they were Christians for several centuries, but on their conquest by Arabs in 647 embraced Mohammedanism; the town Moors do not hold before European settlers, but the nomad tribes show more vitality; Moorish peoples seized and settled in Spain early in the 8th century, and, introducing a civilisation further advanced than that in Europe generally with respect to science, art, and industry alike, maintained a strong rule till the 11th century; then the Spaniards gradually recovered the peninsula ”

“ The prosperity of the Moorish states, from the extensive trade constantly carried on there, the bad use they made of their riches by employing them in continual rebellions, made it necessary that the king should see and inquire into each person’s circumstances, which he proposed to do, as was usual, before the time of their several investitures. ”

“ The curse of sterility, and the freezing winds that sweep over this cheerless region, seem to discourage the hope that it will ever regain its former productiveness. The incessant march of the Moorish armies for a quarter of a century obliterated every sign of animal and vegetable life. ”

“ Highly favorable social and domestic conditions, among which must be considered the prevalent institution of polygamy, caused in after years a prodigious multiplication of the race. The colonists brought with them the devotion to learning which they had imbibed in the presence of the great memorials of ancient civilization on the banks of the Nile and the Euphrates, and many volumes of native and foreign lore which were destined to form the nucleus of the magnificent libraries of Moorish Spain. ”

“ Through this brilliant court, the visitor will proceed or linger as his spirit directs. There are no statues to examine, for the religion of the Moors forbade the representation of living objects; in truth, the exquisitely wrought tracery on every side, upon which the Moorish mind was thus forced to concentrate all its artistic power and skill, is in itself sufficient exclusively to arrest and to enchain the attention. ”

“ Two occupied the opposite bank of the river; the others encircled the Moorish capital with a girdle of dazzling white villas, interspersed with groves of palms rising amidst a wealth of tropical verdure. For miles in every direction were orange orchards, whose sweetness impregnated the air for many a league. Rivulets and fountains diffused through street and garden a delicious coolness. Blossoms of gaudy hue and overpowering fragrance grew in profusion along the avenues. ”

“ The conquest had caused the division of the extensive estates held by the privileged classes, and obtained by centuries of extortion and cruelty, into innumerable farms, a condition which facilitated cultivation and increased agricultural wealth. Many of these lands, formerly devoted to pasturage and to the sports of the nobility, were now improved, and under the skilful efforts of Moorish industry yielded immensely profitable returns.
Each Christian community was rigidly isolated from its Moslem neighbors. ”

“ They found the king in no very great state, yet he received them well, and commanded the Moors who had brought them on shore to show them the city. In going through the streets, our men saw many prisoners in irons; but, not knowing the language, they could not ask who or what these were, yet believed they might be Christians, us our general was informed by the Moorish pilots, and the kings two messengers, that there were Christians on the island, and that the Christians and the Moors had wars together. ”

“ The plague of civil war, the menace of Christian conquest, the evils of revolution and anarchy, the ferocity of the remorseless conqueror, with whom resistance was an offence only to be expiated by death or slavery, were conditions fatal to agricultural and commercial prosperity. Moorish Spain, once the proud mistress of the Occident, the seat of learning and the arts, now the sport of fortune and the prey of savage hordes nurtured amidst the African deserts, was, with the passage of each decade, rapidly descending in the scale of civilization. ”

“ The attainment to a high degree of civilization with all its demoralizing influence was not able to destroy the native politeness, the air of conscious dignity, the noble hospitality, and the courtly graces of manner which distinguished the fierce and untaught tribesman of the Desert. His sense of independence was not hampered by invidious distinctions of rank or inconvenient regulations of property. ”

“ All along the sea-shore, where there is the best land, places are not settled, because the Moors very often make descents, and carry away with them all they can get; and they make slaves of the people which they catch. ”

“ Here, a peaceful tribe of fishermen and shepherds, in an almost-forgotten corner of Europe, which with difficulty they had rescued from the ocean; the sea their profession, and at once their wealth and their plague; poverty with freedom their highest blessing, their glory, their virtue. There, a harmless, moral, commercial people, revelling in the abundant fruits of thriving industry, and jealous of the maintenance of laws which had proved their benefactors. ”

“ As the rest of the Peninsula submitted to the domination of the Moors, the population of this province was largely augmented. Persecution, arising during the civil wars, still further increased immigration; deposed prelates, [342] ruined artisans, and discontented slaves sought the companionship and aid of their fellow-sectaries; many, in apprehension of future evil, voluntarily abandoned their possessions ”

“ In the Moorish university African, Arab, Jew, and European all met, some to give, others to take, in the great exchange of culture. It was possible there to take as it were a bird's-eye view of the most widely separated races of men, each with its characteristic out-look. ”

“ Moorish Proverb.
Few of us realize to what an extent our amusements, pastimes, and recreations enter into the formation of our individual, and consequently of our national, character. It is therefore well worth our while to take a glance at the Moor at play, or as near play as he ever gets. The stately father of a family must content himself, as his years and flesh increase, with such amusements as shall not entail exertion. ”

“ The entire body of tradition, combined with facts accumulated by subsequent writers of every race and creed, does not afford such a thorough insight into the public and domestic life, the prevailing sentiments and prejudices, the habits and customs of the inhabitants of the Peninsula, as do the Moallakat. ”

“ We do for manners and the arts in general what the Moors did for learning when the wild hordes came down. There were capital chaps among the barbarians,' he smiled, 'I haven't a doubt! But it was the men who held fast to civilization's clue, they were the people who mattered. We matter. ”

“ The prejudice fostered by centuries of unrelenting hostility, the aversion entertained by the ministers of an antagonistic and triumphant faith, have, as far as human diligence could accomplish it, destroyed all the smaller and more inconspicuous evidences of Moorish civilization. The durability of their materials, the excellence of their workmanship, and the multiplicity of uses to which these articles were destined, would imply that vast numbers of them would still be met with, especially in the old Moslem provinces of Spain. ”

“ An armed retinue, splendidly equipped, guarded their persons when they went abroad. In accordance with the anomalous conditions which prevailed in the society of Moorish Spain,—where soldiers served eunuchs and freemen obeyed the behests of slaves,—a numerous following of dependents and employees, who had not been subjected to either the torture of emasculation or the restraints of servitude, awaited the pleasure of the unprincipled favorites of royalty. ”

“ The two great Nations, inhabiting this Part of the Indies, differ widely from each other in their Complexions, Language, Manners, Disposition, and Religion. The Moguls (Moghuls) who are commonly called Moors or Moormen, are a robust, stately, and, in respect to the original Natives, a fair People. They speak what the English in India commonly call the Moors Tongue, which is in truth the Persian, 4or at least a Dialect of the Persian. They are naturally vain, affect Shew and Pomp in every thing, are much addicted to Luxury, fierce, oppressive, and, for the most part, very rapacious. ”

“ And then holding it better to die like good men in the field, than shut up like bad ones, we went out against them, and fought with them in the open field, and smote them and put them to flight; and both the Moorish Kings were sorely wounded, and many of the Moors were slain, and many were taken prisoners, and great was the spoil which we won in the field, both of captives and of horses and arms, gold and silver and pearls, so that all who are with him are rich men. ”

“ From Moorish sources, through intercourse with the Hispano-Arabs and the medium of French and Sicilian conquest, were derived those maxims of chivalry which modified the turbulent barbarism of feudal Europe, the courteous gallantry of the tournament, idolatrous devotion to the female character, a [103] high sense of honor and personal dignity, and the refining amenities of social life. ”

“ The men one meets outside of the city, in and about the villages, engaged upon the land, or otherwise, form a hardy, swarthy, and capable race,—industrious, ignorant, and very pious. These men, on an average, are not quite so tall as those of North America, but they are strong, broad-shouldered, frugal, and honest, with a decided Moorish cast of countenance, whose usual expression is a compound of apathy and dejection. ”

“ The facility with which the Moors occupied it in the seventh century, and the permanence of their dominion for so many centuries, is in itself sufficient to prove that a people of the same race had been established there before them, and that they were not a foreign race holding the natives in subjection, but dwelling among their own kith and kin. ”

“ As, from the period when that event occurred, the Mauritanians or Moors, who were thus suddenly converted to Mohammedanism, have frequently been confounded with the native Arabians, it will be proper to say a few words concerning that extraordinary people: a people who, after occupying for so many centuries an insignificant place among the nations of the earth, rapidly rendered themselves masters of the greater part of the known world. ”

“ From this period the name of Moors, which had gradually superseded the primitive one of Spanish Arabs, gave way to the title of Moriscoes, by which this unfortunate people continued to be known through the remainder of their protracted existence in the Peninsula. [39]
The circumstances, under which this important revolution in religion was effected in the whole population of this great city, will excite only feelings of disgust at the present day, mingled, indeed, with compassion for the unhappy beings, who so heedlessly incurred the heavy liabilities attached to their new faith. ”

“ The country devastated by these incessant and destructive inroads never recovered its prosperity. The once beautiful regions of the Ebro and the Pisuerga now present to the eye the sombre and monotonous aspect of a desert, and portions of the valley of the Guadalquivir, which under Moorish rule were clothed with extensive orchards and luxuriant harvests, have lapsed into primeval desolation. ”

“ It is not, by the way, a little singular that almost in exact proportion as the Moors enlarged the liberty of their women, by the example of the Spaniards, did the Spaniards contract that of their own bright-eyed ladies, by the example of the Moors; and for many years the rigor of the Spanish duenna was scarcely inferior to that of the Raid of a Moorish harem, or the ladies under charge of the one much more obvious to the gaze of the profane, than the beautiful slaves of the latter. ”