In 1001 the Mohammedan army, in two formidable bodies, ascended the Duero, and encountered the Christians in the vicinity of Calatanazar, a place between Soria and Medina Cœli. When Almansor perceived the widespread tents of the Christians, he was struck with surprise. The battle commenced with break of day, and was maintained with unexampled obstinacy until darkness separated the combatants.
That the loss on both sides was immense, may well be conceived from the desperate valour of the two armies. If Almansor by his frequent and impetuous assaults broke the adverse line, it was soon reformed, and the next moment saw the Christian knights in the very heart of the infidels. Overcome with fatigue, with anxiety, and still more with the mortification of having been so unexpectedly repelled, he slowly retired to his tent, to await the customary visits of his generals. The extent of his disaster was unknown to him, until he learned, from the few who arrived, the fate of their brother chiefs. To hazard a second field, he well saw, would be destruction; and burning with shame he ordered a retreat. Whether the Mohammedans were disturbed or not in their retreat is uncertain, but Almansor himself proceeded no further than the frontiers of Castile, before he sank under the weight of his despair. Obstinately refusing all consolation—some accounts say all support—he died in the arms of his son Abdul-Malik, who had hastened from Africa to see him, the third day of the moon Shaffal (1002).
Almansor was formed for a great sovereign. He was not only the most able of generals, and the most valiant of soldiers, but he was an enlightened statesman, an active governor, an encourager of science and the arts, and a magnificent rewarder of merit. His loss was fatal to Cordova. The national sorrow was mitigated for a moment by the appointment of Abdul-Malik to the vacant post of hajib. This minister promised to tread in the steps of his illustrious father; his administration both in Africa and Spain was signalised by great spirit and valour; but, unlike Almansor, he found the Christians too well prepared to be taken by surprise. He was suddenly seized with excruciating pains—the effect, probably, of poison; and he died in 1008, in the seventh year of his administration. With him ended the prosperity of Mohammedan Spain.
[1009-1012 A.D.]
Abd ar-Rahman, the brother of Abdul-Malik, was next advanced to the post of hajib. He prevailed on the childless monarch to designate him as successor to the throne. This rash act occasioned his ruin, and was one of those which accelerated with fearful rapidity the decline of the state. The race of the Omayyads was not extinct; and Muhammed, a prince of that house, resolved to chastise the presumption of the hajib. He rapidly marched on the city, forcibly seized on the palace and king, and proclaimed the deposition of the hajib, who later was wounded, taken, and crucified by the barbarous victor.
Muhammed first caused himself to be appointed hajib; but the modest title soon displeased, and he aspired to that of king. He who had successfully rebelled against his sovereign, and who held that sovereign a prisoner in the palace, was not likely to hesitate at greater crimes. By his orders Hisham was secretly conveyed to an obscure fortress, and there confined. At the same time the death of the king was publicly announced; a person resembling him in stature and countenance was, we are told, substituted for him, and laid in the royal sepulchre; and Muhammed, in conformity with the pretended will of his predecessor, was hailed as prince of the believers.
But the usurper was far from secure in his seat of power. The dangerous example which he himself had set of successful rebellion, was too attractive not to be followed; and his own acts hastened the invitation. Incensed against the African guard which had supported the factions of Abd ar-Rahman, he dissolved that formidable body, and ordered them to be expelled the city. They naturally resisted; but with the aid of the populace he at length forced them beyond the walls, and threw after them the head of their chief. The exasperated Africans swore to be revenged, and proclaimed Suleiman, of the royal blood of the Omayyads, the successor of Hisham. As the forces of Suleiman were too few to make an open attack on Cordova, he traversed the country in search of partisans, and added greatly to the number of his followers. He even procured many Christian auxiliaries from Sancho, count of Castile. In an obstinately contended battle he overthrew the usurper; twenty thousand troops of the latter being left on the field. The victor hastened to Cordova, and assumed the reins of sovereignty. There, however, he did not long remain; he felt he was unpopular; and to avoid assassination, he shut himself up in the palace of Azhara.
The African domination—for such his was—became odious to the native Moslems; nor was the feeling lessened by the presence of the Christian auxiliaries. The latter were honourably dismissed; but still there was no solid security for Suleiman, against whom plots were frequent. To add to his vexations, Muhammed, aided by Count Raymond of Barcelona and several walis, advanced against Cordova. The African party was defeated, its chief forced to flee, and Muhammed again recognised as king. But throughout these contentions, the vicissitudes of success and failure followed each other with amazing celerity. Though pursued by a superior force headed in person by his bitter rival, Suleiman turned round and inflicted a terrible defeat on Muhammed, who precipitately fled, almost alone, to the capital. The victor followed him, seized on the heights in the vicinity of Cordova, and laid siege to the place. Muhammed was weakened by the desertion of his Christian allies, and still more by the disaffection of the mob, which bears about the same feeling to unfortunate princes as the kindred cur towards the meanly clad visitant. The hajib Uhada, a man who had contrived to keep his post in every recent change of government, took advantage of this alienation of popular feeling; he did not declare for Suleiman, as little of a favourite as the present ruler; but he suddenly drew Hisham from confinement, and showed him to the astonished populace. Astonishment gave way to transport; and transport, as usual, to excesses. Muhammed was beheaded, his corpse torn in pieces by the new converts to legitimacy (1012 A.D.), and the head thrown into the camp of Suleiman.
[1012-1023 A.D.]
But Suleiman refused to recognise the grandson of the great Abd ar-Rahman. Having formed an alliance with Obaid Allah, the son of Muhammed and wali of Toledo, he aimed at nothing less than the deposition of the king. At first his efforts were unpromising; his ally was defeated, made prisoner, and beheaded. Fortune favoured him in other respects. Suleiman marched on Cordova. In vain did the hajib Khairan, the successor of Uhada, whom Hisham in a fit of suspicion had put to death, attempt to defend the city. The inhabitants opened one of the gates; the Africans entered, fought, and conquered; their chief was a second time saluted as king, and Hisham forever disappeared from the stage of royalty—probably at the same moment from that of life.
Suleiman began his reign—for so long as Hisham lived he cannot be properly ranked among the kings of Cordova—by rewarding his adherents in the most lavish manner. He confirmed them, as he had promised, in the hereditary possession of their fiefs; thus engrafting on a strangely foreign stock the feudal institution of more northern nations. This was the signal for the creation of numerous independent sovereignties, and consequently for the ruin of Mohammedan Spain. The strength of the misbelievers had consisted in their unity under the religious sway of their caliphs; when this strong bulwark was dissolved the scattered fragments of their empire might for a moment resist the eager assaults of the Christians; but these must inevitably be swept away in the end by the overwhelming flood.