e
spear without lowering it.... With this same banner did Abdurrahman,
and his son Hisham, vanquish their enemies whenever they met them; and
in such veneration was it held, that whenever the turban by long use
decayed, it was not removed, but a new one placed over it. In this
manner it was preserved till the days of Abdurrahman II.; some say
till the days of his son Mohammed, when the turban on the spear being
decayed, the vizirs of that monarch, seeing nothing under it but a few
rags twisted round the spear, gave orders for their removal, and the
whole was thrown away.... 'From that time,' remarks the judicious
historian Ibn Hayyan, 'the empire of the Beni-Umeyyah began visibly to
decline.'"

Under the auspices of this novel _oriflamme_ the Umeyyan prince and
his followers advanced upon Cordova, whither Yusuf Al-Fehri, who had
been engaged in suppressing an insurrection in the _Thagher_,
(Aragon,) had hastened to oppose them at the head of the Beni-Modhar.
Exchanging for a mule the fiery courser which the jealous whispers of
his adherents had remarked as designed to secure his escape in case of
defeat, Abdurrahman led his troops to the attack; and his victory
established on the throne of Spain a new dynasty of the Beni-Umeyyah,
"who thus regained in the west the supremacy which they had lost in
the east." Those of the fallen family who had escaped the general
massacre, flocked to the court of their fortunate kinsman, "to all of
whom he gave pensions, commands, and governments, by which means his
empire was strengthened;"--and the robes and turbans of the monarch
and the princes were always white, the colour assumed by the house of
Umeyyah, in opposition to the black livery of their rivals. Though
Abdurrahman never assumed the title of commander of the faithful, he
suppressed the _khotbah_ or public prayers in the name of the
Abbasides; and when Al-Ala, the _wali_ of Africa, invaded Spain in
order to re-establish the supremacy of the eastern khalif, the head of
his unsuccessful general, thrown before the tent of Al-mansor at
Mekka, conveyed to him the first tidings of the destruction of the
armament by the "hawk of the Koreysh," as he was wont to term
Abdurrahman. In the elation of triumph from this success, he is even
said to have contemplated marching through Africa to attack Al-mansor
in the east; but this design was frustrated by the continual
rebellions of the Arab tribes, whom all his address and prudence was
u