At a very remote period there were two tribes in the interior of Spain, the Celtæ and Iberi, that were greatly distinguished for their love of independence and their bravery in defending it. The antiquarians have failed to give us any information as to what they were or whence they came. They were contemporaneous with some of the early colonies of the Phœnicians. Their tactics in battle seemed to have been to break the enemy’s ranks by a charge as cavalry, and to then dismount and fight on foot. They united as one people and called themselves Celtiberi. Where they got their horses, or whether they had them before the Phœnicians arrived, are questions that cannot be answered.
The Visigoths, or western Goths, overran Northern Italy, settled in Southern France and eventually passed over into Spain, where they established a dynasty that lasted over two centuries and until it was overthrown by the Saracens, A.D. 711. Roderick, the king of the Visigoths, went out to battle with the Saracens, arrayed in his most showy apparel, and mounted on his splendid chariot, made of ivory and set with precious stones. As the battle progressed he saw what he had good reason to believe was treachery on the part of one wing of his army and he alighted from his chariot, mounted his horse called Orelia and rode away while his soldiers were being butchered. He was the last of the Gothic dynasty. There had been a battle between the navies of the Saracens and the Goths, A.D. 680, fifty-one years earlier, in which the fleet of the Saracens had been entirely destroyed, and at that time the Saracens occupied the whole of the southern shore of the Mediterranean. The word “Moors,” as often used to designate the people of Northern Africa, is not well chosen, for it really belongs to but one of many different tribes of different names. The term “Saracen” anciently meant only an Arab born, but since the middle ages it has come to mean any and all adherents to the Mohammedan religion, in the usage of Christian people, and is particularly apposite when speaking of a number of tribes engaged in a common cause.
The people of Northern Africa were not negroes as we understand the word, but a mixture of different races. When the Phœnicians settled among them they were nomadic barbarians, possessing a country of great riches without knowing it. Under the tuition of their new masters they made great advances in many of the arts of peace and in all the arts of war. The Phœnician blood was liberally commingled with that of the natives. The blood carried the brains, and hence the beautiful structures that came from their hands and heads. No purely bred nomad ever could have conceived or constructed the Alhambra. The Phœnicians were refined and educated idolaters, as refinement and education were understood in their day, while the native people were literally barbarians.