nable to keep in order; and "while the Moslems were revolting against
their sovereign, the Christians of Galicia gathered strength, took
possession of the towns and fortresses on the frontier, and expelled
their inhabitants." We find him at length obliged, in order to
maintain his authority, to have recourse to the system, which in the
next century became universal in the east, of entrusting the defence
of his throne and person, not to the native levies of his kingdom, but
to a standing army of purchased slaves or _Mamlukes_. "He began to
cease all communication with the chiefs of the Arabian tribes, whom he
found animated with a strong hatred against him, and to surround
himself with slaves and people entirely devoted to him; for which end
he engaged followers and took clients from every province of his
empire, and sent over to Africa to enlist Berbers. 'Thus,' says Ibn
Hayyan, 'Abdurrahman collected an army of slaves and Berbers,
amounting to upwards of 40,000 men, by means of whom he always
remained victorious, in every contest with the Arabian tribes of
Andalus.'"

The sciences and fine arts, which had been almost banished from Spain
since the conquest, returned in the train of the new dynasty; and
literature was encouraged by the example of Abdurrahman, who was
himself a poet of no mean merit. His affectionate remembrance of his
Syrian home, led him to introduce into his new kingdom the flowers and
fruits of the east;--and the palm-tree, which was the parent of all
those of its kind in Spain, and to which he addressed the well-known
lines, lamenting their common fate as exiles from their fatherland,
was planted by himself in the gardens of the Rissafah, a country
palace built on the model of one near Damascus, in which the first
years of his life had been spent. In architectural magnificence he
rivaled or surpassed the former princes of his race, the monuments of
whose grandeur still exist in the mosque of the Beni-Umeyyah at
Damascus, and other edifices adorning the cities of Syria. The palaces
and aqueducts which he constructed in Cordova, testified his zeal for
the splendour, as well as his care for the salubrity, of his
capital;--and after expending the sum of 80,000 golden _dinars_ (the
produce of the royal fifth of all spoil taken in war) in the erection
of the stately mosque which bears his name, he bequeathed the
completion of the structure, at his death, A.D. 788, to his younger
son Hisham, whom he nomina