8 Unexplored Spain 
beyond that, be allowed to interpolate a remark or two in 
elucidation of what sometimes appear popular misconceptions on 
these and subsequent events. Thus, during the period denomin- 
ated “domination,” the Arab conquerors enjoyed no peaceful or 
undisputed possession. During all those centuries there continued 
one long succession of wars—intermittent attempts, successful 
and the reverse, at reconquest by the Christian power. Here a 
patch of ground, a city, or a province was regained ; presently, 
perhaps, to be lost a second or a third time. Never for long 
was there a final acceptance of the major force. But during the 
interludes, the periods of rest between struggles, the two con- 
tending races lived in more or less friendly intercourse, exchanging 
courtesies and even maintaining a stout rivalry in those warlike 
forms of sport which in medizval times formed but a substitute 
for war. It was thence that the custom of bull-fighting took its 
rise. If not fighting Arabs, fight bulls, and so prepare for the 
more strenuous contest. Such conditions could not but have 
tended towards greater coherence among the various elements on 
the Christian side, except for the incessant internecine rivalries 
between the Christians themselves. A Spanish knight or kinglet 
would invoke the aid of his nation’s foe to consolidate or establish 
his own petty estate. Christians with Moslem auxiliaries fought 
Moslems reinforced by Christian renegades. 
The Moorish invader had to fight for his possession—every 
yard of it. Yet despite that, this energetic race found time to 
colonise, to develop and enrich the subjugated region with a 
thoroughness the evidence of which faces us to-day. We do not 
refer to their cities or to such monuments in stone as the Mezquita 
or Alhambra, but to their introduction into rural Spain of much 
of what to-day constitutes chief sources of the country’s wealth, 
and which might have been enormously increased had Moorish 
methods been followed up. The Koran expressly ordains and 
directs the introduction of all available fruits or plants suitable 
to soil that came, or comes, under Moslem dominion. ‘The man 
who plants or sows the seed of anything which, with the fruit 
thereof, gives sustenance to man, bird or beast does an action as 
commendable as charity ””—so wrote one of their philosophers. 
‘He who builds a house and plants trees and who oppresses no 
one, nor lacks justice, will receive abundant reward from the 
Almighty.” There you have the religion both of the good man 
