, without a second blow, before the victors of a single field; and
was overrun with such rapidity, that from the inability of the
conquerors to garrison the cities which surrendered, they were
entrusted for the time to the guard of the Jews!--a singular
circumstance, which, when coupled with the statement that many of the
Berbers (of whom the invading army was almost wholly composed) were
recent converts from Judaism,[7] would apparently imply that the
conquest was facilitated by a previous correspondence. The subjugation
of the country was completed by the arrival of Musa himself, who
reduced Seville and the other towns which still held out, and is even
said to have crossed the Pyrenees and sacked Narbonne;[8] but this is
not mentioned by any Christian writer, and is referred by the
translator to his invasion of Catalonia, which the Arabs considered as
part of "the land of the Franks." After the first fury of conquest had
subsided, the Christians who remained in their homes were permitted to
live unmolested, on payment of the capitation-tax; but peculiar
privileges were accorded to the Jews, and the hold of the Moslems on
the country was strengthened by the vast influx of settlers, not only
from Africa, but from Syria and Arabia, who were attracted by the
reports of the riches and fertility of the new province. Nearly all
the tribes of Arabia are enumerated by Al-Makkari as represented in
Spain; and the feuds of the two great divisions, the Beni-Modhar[9] or
race of Adnan, and the Beni-Kahttan or Arabs of Yemen, gave rise to
most of the civil wars which subsequently desolated Andalus.

[5] He is called by the Arabic writers Ludherik--a name
afterwards applied as a general designation to the kings of
Castile.

[6] The translator adduces strong grounds for believing that
the battle was fought, not as usually held, in the plain of
Xeres, on the south bank of the Guadalete, but "nearer the
sea-shore, and not far from the town of Medina-Sidonia."

[7] This is not mentioned by the authors from whom Al-Makkari
has drawn his materials, but is stated by Professor de
Gayangos on the authority of Ibn Khaldun.

[8] A story is here told of Musa's reaching some colossal
ruins, and a monument inscribed with Arabic characters
pointing out that place as the term of his conquests--a legend
which perhaps gave the hint for one of the tales in the
Thousand and One Nights, in