h was very large and had suffered
terrible cruelties under its old masters, was treated with especial
mildness and humanity. There was a simple road to freedom opened to
every man. He had only to say, "There is one God, and Mahommed is his
Prophet," and on the instant he became a freeman!

Such gentle proselytizing as this speedily won converts, not alone
among slaves but from all classes. The pacification of Spain by the
Romans had required centuries; while only a few years sufficed to make
of the vanquished in the southern provinces, a contented and almost
happy people; not only reconciled, but even glad of the change of
masters. Never was Andalusia so mildly, justly, and wisely governed as
by her Arab conquerors.

The most delicate of all problems is that of dealing with a conquered
race in its own land. That this should have been so wisely and so
skillfully handled would be incomprehensible if this had been really,
what it is always called, a Moorish conquest. But to be accurate, it
was a Moorish invasion and a Saracen conquest!

The fierce Berber Moor contributed the brute force, which was wielded
by Saracen intelligence.

The Saracens were the leaven which penetrated the whole sodden mass
of Mahommedanism. With a civilization which had been ripening for
centuries under Oriental skies,--rich in wisdom, learning, culture,
science, and in art,--they had come into Europe, infidels though they
were, to build up and not to destroy.

The Roman conquest of Spain had civilized a barbarous race. The Gothic
conquest of Romanized Spain had converted an effete civilization into
a strong semi-barbarism. Now again the Saracen had come from the East
to convert a semi-barbarism into a civilization richer than any Spain
had yet known, and, more than that, to hold up a torch of learning
and enlightenment which should illumine Europe in the days of darkness
which were at hand. Although this difference between Arab and Moor
primarily existed, they became fused, and we shall speak of them only
as Moors. But we should not lose sight of the fact that the superior
intelligence which made the Moorish kingdom magnificent was from the
land of the Prophet.

The Saracen dealt gently with the conquered Spaniard, not because his
heart was tender and kind, but because he was crafty and wise, and
knew when not to use force, in order to accomplish his ends. For
the same reason he refrained from trying to break the spirit of the
independent