ns retained their
goods, and could even alienate their lands. They paid a graduated tax
varying from thirteen pounds to three guineas.[3] In all probability the
Christians under Moslem rule were not worse off than their
coreligionists in Galicia and Leon. A signal proof of this is afforded
by the fact that, in spite of the distracted state of the country, which
would seem to hold out a great hope of success, we hear of no attempts
at revolt on the part of the subjected Christians in the eighth century,
except at Beja, where the Christians seem to have been led away by the
ambition of an Arab chief.[4] They were even somewhat indifferent to the
cause of their coreligionists in the North, and the attempts which
Pelayo and his successors made to induce them to rise in concert with
their brethren met with but scant success.[5]

[1] See especially Conde, Pref. p. vi.

[2] Dozy, ii. 39.

[3] Dozy, ii. 40.

[4] Dozy, ii. 42.

[5] Cardonne, i. 106.

There can be no doubt, however, that the good understanding, which at
first existed between the Moslems and their Christian subjects,
gradually gave place to a very different state of things, owing in no
small degree to the free Christians in the North, whose presence on
their borders was a continual menace to the Moslem dominion, and a
perpetual incentive to the subject Christians to rise and assert their
freedom.

Our purpose now is to trace out, so far as the scanty indications
scattered in the writers of the time will allow, the relations that
existed between the two religions during the 275 years of the Khalifate,
and the influence which these relations had upon the development of the
one and the other. It will be agreeable to the natural arrangement to
take the former question first.

With a view to the better understanding of the position of Christianity
and Mohammedanism at the very beginning of our inquiry, we have thought
it advisable to point out in a preliminary sketch the development of
Christianity in Spain previous to the period when the Moslems, fresh
from their native deserts of Arabia and Africa, bearing the sword in one
hand and the Koran in the other, possessed themselves of one of the
fairest provinces of Christendom. This having been already done, we can
at once proceed to investigate the mutual relations of Christianity and
Mohammedanism in Spain during the 300 years of the Khalifate of Cordova.

It was in fulfilment of a suppos