untries, by Kadis, whose decisions were regulated by
the precepts of the Koran: but we find no mention (even before the
assumption of the titles of Imam and Khalif by Abdurrahman III.) of
any supreme ecclesiastical chief like the Sheikh-al-Islam or Mufti of
the Ottomans;--though there were chief justices analogous to the
Turkish Kadileskers, who bore the title of _Kadi-'l-jamah_.

[17] We do not find this division mentioned by the authors
cited by Al-Makkari; but it is stated by Conde, and appears to
have prevailed as long as the kingdom retained its unity. The
six provincial capitals were Saragossa, Toledo, Merida,
Valencia, Murcia, and Granada. Shortly before the arrival of
Abdurrahman, Yusuf Al-Fehri had organized _five_ great
governments, one of which comprised Narbonne and the
Trans-Pyrenean conquests.

[18] Under the Arab dynasties of the east, the _vizir_ was
exclusively an officer _of the pen_: and Makrizi expressly
mentions that Bedr-al-Jemali, who became vizir to the Fatimite
khalif Al-Mostanssor in 1074, was the first in whom _the sword
and the pen_ were united.

[19] See Sale's Koran. Preliminary Discourse. Sect. 8.

The royal revenue was derived from a variety of sources. The principal
were, a land-tax amounting to one-tenth of the produce of the soil and
the mines, the capitation-tax paid by the Jews and Christians, and the
fifth of the spoil taken from the enemy--an enormously productive item
in a time of constant warfare--besides a duty of two and a half per
cent on all exports and imports. These were the legitimate dues of the
crown, sanctioned by the Koran; but the splendid court maintained by
the later sovereigns of Cordova, their lavish expenditure in building,
and their large military and naval establishments, often compelled
them to have recourse to irregular methods of raising money, by forced
loans and by duties laid on different articles of food, in direct
violation of the Moslem law. The amount raised by all these means
varied greatly at different periods. Under Abdurrahman II., the whole
direct revenue is said not to have exceeded 1,000,000 of gold
_din[=a]rs_:--but the royal fifths, and other extraordinary sources of
income, appear not to have been included in this estimate:--and a
century later, under the third and greatest prince of that name, we
are told, on the authority of the biographer Ibn Khallekan, that "the
revenues of And