the richest and most
powerful monarch then in Europe.[14]

He held possession of Portugal, Andalusia, the Kingdom of Grenada,
Mercia, Valencia, and the greater part of New-Castile, the most beautiful
and fertile countries of Spain.

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These provinces were at that time extremely populous, and the Moors had
attained the highest perfection in agriculture. Historians assure us,
that there existed on the shores of the Guadalquiver twelve thousand
villages; and that a traveller could not proceed through the country
without encountering some hamlet every quarter of an hour. There existed
in the dominions of the caliph eighty great cities, three hundred of the
second order, and an infinite number of smaller towns. Cordova, the
capital of the kingdom, enclosed within its walls two hundred thousand
houses and nine hundred public baths.

All this prosperity was reversed by the expulsion of the Moors from the
Peninsula. The reason is apparent: the Moorish conquerors of Spain did
not persecute their vanquished foes; the Spaniards, when they had subdued
the Moors, oppressed and banished them.

The revenues of the caliphs of Cordova are represented to have amounted
annually to twelve millions and forty-five thousand dinars of gold.[15]
Independent of this income in money, many imposts were paid in the
products of the soil; and among an industrious agricultural {71}
population, possessed of the most fertile country in the world, this
rural wealth was incalculable. The gold and silver mines, known in Spain
from the earliest times, were another source of wealth. Commerce, too,
enriched alike the sovereign and the people. The commerce of the Moors
was carried on in many articles: silks, oils, sugar, cochineal, iron,
wool (which was at that time extremely valuable), ambergris, yellow
amber, loadstone, antimony, isinglass, rock-crystal, sulphur, saffron,
ginger, the product of the coral-beds on the coast of Andalusia, of the
pearl fisheries on that of Catalonia, and rubies, of which they had
discovered two localities, one at Malaga and another at Beja. These
valuable articles were, either before or after being wrought, transported
to Egypt or other parts of Africa, and to the East. The emperors of
Constantinople, always allied from necessity to the caliphs of Cordova,
favoured these commercial enterprises, and, by their countenance,
assisted in enlarging, to a vast extent, the field of their operations;
while the neighbo