that the table constructed by the genii for Solomon, and
which Tarik afterwards found at Toledo, was transported to Spain--and
Al-Makkari professes himself, as well he may, unable to reconcile the
different accounts. Fifty-five kings descended from Ishban, whose race
was dispossessed ("about the time of the Messiah, on whom be peace!")
by a people called Bishtilikat, (Visigoths?) under a king called
Talubush, (Ataulphus?) whom Al-Makkari holds to have been the same
people as the "barbarians of Rome," though "there are not wanting
authors who make the Goths and the Bishtilikat only one nation." After
holding possession during the reigns of twenty-seven monarchs, they
were in turn subdued by the Goths, whose royal residence was
"Toleyalah, (Toledo,) though Isbiliah (Seville) continued to be the
abode of the sciences." The Gothic kings are said to have been
thirty-six;--but the only one particularized by name is
"Khoshandinus, (Constantine,) who not only embraced Christianity
himself, but called on his subjects to do the same, and is held by the
Christians as the greatest king they ever had.... Several kings of his
posterity reigned after him, till Andalus was finally subdued by the
Arabs, by whose means God was pleased to make manifest the superiority
of Islam over every other religion."

With the Arab, conquest the authentic history commences; and the
accounts given from the Moslem writers of this memorable event, which
first gave the followers of the Prophet a footing in Europe, differ in
no material point from the eloquent narrative of Gibbon. Al-Makkari,
however, does not fail to inform us, that predictions had been rife
from long past ages, which foretold the invasion and conquest of the
country by a fierce people from Africa; and potent were the spells and
talismans constructed to ward off the danger, "by the _Greek_ kings
who reigned in old times." Several of these are described with due
solemnity; and among them we find the tale of the visit paid by
Roderic[5] to the magic tower at Toledo, which has been rendered
familiar by the pages of Scott and Southey. We shall not here
recapitulate the well-known incidents of the wrongs and revenge of
Count Yllan, or Julian, the first landing of Tarif at Tarifa, the
second expedition sent by Musa under Tarik Ibn Zeyad, and the death or
disappearance of the Gothic king on the fatal day of Guadalete.[6] So
complete was the discomfiture of the Christians, that the kingdom
fell