The history of the Mohammedans in the Iberian peninsula has been treated in another volume of this Series,[1] and it is only necessary to note here that under the wise and tolerant rule of the Ommeyad sultans, the rich plains alike of Spain and Portugal maintained the prosperity which they had enjoyed under the Roman emperors and the Visigothic kings, and that the old Roman _coloniæ_ and _municipia_ retained their Roman self-government, and Lisbon and Oporto increased in wealth and commercial importance. Though the Arabs were fanatical conquerors, the Ommeyads were enlightened rulers, and the Christian religion was protected, though not encouraged, as long as the Christian bishops refrained from active exertions against the Mohammedans. In Portugal also, owing to its distance from Cordova, the duties of government were granted almost entirely to the Mosarabs, as the numerous native converts to Islam were called, men who felt the importance of keeping the adherents of the two prevailing religions from coming to blows.
But this peaceful state of things was not to last; the Iberian peninsula, which had remained prosperous under Romans, Visigoths, and Mohammedans, was to suffer centuries of fierce war, war which was to devastate its fields and destroy its cities, but from which its people were to develop into a race of hardy and chivalrous warriors. The people of the peninsula under the rule of foreign sovereigns had become soft and weak, occupied only in accumulating wealth, in which to live in comfort and luxury. Architectural remains of the first thousand years of the Christian era show to what a pitch of comfort the people had attained, but the easy conquests of the Visigoths and the Moors prove that they had become enervated by luxury. During the next five hundred years a different state of things was to appear. The land and the cities alike of Spain and Portugal were to be ravaged and destroyed in terrible wars, and a race of soldiers, bred in all the laws and customs of chivalry, was to arise--a race which, after finding no further exercise for its energies at home, was to extend its power to India and to the New World, as yet unknown, across the Atlantic. Whether it were better to spend lives of luxurious ease or to become warriors was a question not asked of the people of the Iberian peninsula; they had no choice in the matter; but it must not be forgotten in watching the gradual development of this race of warriors in one part of the peninsula, in Portugal, that it was, when formed, to do great things for Europe and for the advancement of a higher civilization than that of the stormy centuries in which it arose.