isitions between the Garrone and
the Pyrenees.

Meanwhile the Christian remnant, left unmolested in the Asturian and
Galician mountains, gradually recovered courage: and in 717-18, "a
despicable barbarian," (as he is termed by Ibn Hayyan, a writer often
cited by Al-Makkari,) "named Belay, (Pelayo or Pelagius,) rose in
Galicia; and from that moment the Christians began to resist the
Moslems, and to defend their wives and daughters; for till then they
had not shown the least inclination to do so." "Would to God," piously
subjoins Al-Makkari, "that the Moslems had then extinguished at once
the sparkles of a fire destined to consume their whole dominion in
those parts! But they said--'What are thirty barbarians, perched on a
rock? they must inevitably die!'" The spark, which contained the germ
of the future independence of Spain, was thus suffered to remain and
spread, while the swords of the Moslems were occupied in France; and
its growth was further favoured by the anarchy and civil dissensions
which broke out among the conquerors. While the leaders of the
different Arab factions contested, sword in hand, the viceroyalty of
Spain, the Berbers (whose conversion to Islam was apparently yet but
imperfect) rose in furious revolt both in Spain and Africa, and were
only overpowered by a fresh army sent by the Khalif Hisham from Syria.
But the arrival of these reinforcements added new fuel to the old
feuds of the Beni-Modhar, and the Yemenis or Beni-Kahttan; and a
desperate civil war raged till 746, when the Khalif's lieutenant, the
Emir Abu'l-Khattar, who supported the Yemenis, was killed in a pitched
battle fought near Cordova. The leader of the victorious tribe, Yusuf
Al-Fehri,[11] now assumed supreme power, which he exercised nearly ten
years as an independent ruler, without reference to the court of
Damascus. The state of affairs in the East, indeed, left little
leisure to the Umeyyan khalifs to attend to the regulation of a remote
province. Their throne was already tottering before the arms and
intrigues of the Abbasides, whose black banners, under the guidance of
the formidable Abu-Moslem, were even now bearing down from Khorassan
upon Syria. The unpopular cause of the Beni-Umeyyah, who were detested
for the murder of the grandsons of the Prophet under the second of
their line, was lost in a single battle; and the death of Merwan, the
last khalif of the race, was followed by the unsparing proscription of
the whole family