Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/427

I THE SPANISH ARABS. 283 ate families. Without placing too much reliance chapter on anj numerical statements, however, we may '- — give due weight to the inference of an intelligent writer, who remarks that their minute cultivation of the soil, the cheapness of their labor, their par- ticular attention to the most nutritious esculents, many of them such as would be rejected by Eu- ropeans at this day, are indicative of a crowded population, like that, perhaps, which swarms over Japan or China, where the same economy is neces sarily resorted to for the mere sustenance of life. ^^ Whatever consequence a nation may derive, in its own age, from physical resources, its intellectual developement will form the subject of deepest in- terest to posterity. The most flourishing periods of both not unfrequently coincide. Thus the reigns of Abderrahman the Third, Alhakem the Second, and the regency of Almanzor, embracing the latter half of the tenth century, during which the Spanish Arabs reached their highest political importance, may be regarded as the period of their highest 19 See a sensible essay by the 338,) " the banks of the Guadal- Abb6 Correa da Serra on the bus- quivir were lined with no less than bandry of the Spanish Arabs, con- twelve thousand villages and ham- tained in torn. i. of Archives Lit- lets." The length of the river, t^raires de I'Europe, (Paris, 1804.) not exceeding three hundred miles, — Masdeu, Historia Critica, torn, would scarcely afford room for the xiii. pp. 115, 117, 127, 131. — same number of farm-houses. Con- Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, de's version of the Arabic passage tom. i. cap. 44. — Casiri, Biblio- represents twelve thousand ham- theca Escurialensis, tom. i. p. 338. lets, farms, and castles, to have An absurd story has been tran- " been scattered over the regions scribed from Cardonne, with little watered by the Guadalquivir " ; hesitation, by almost every sue- indicating by this indefinite state- ceeding writer upon this subject, ment nothing more than the ex- According to him, (Hist. d'Af- treme populousness of the province rique et d'Espagne, tom. i. p. of Andalusia.