The seat of government was transferred, soon after the murder of the son of Musa, to Cordova, and Seville sank for a time to a subsidiary rank. The various cities of Andalusia were allotted by the governor Abdelmelic among the different Syrian peoples who had flocked over on the news of the conquest; and Ishbiliyah, according to Señor de Madrazo, was assigned to the citizens of Horns, the classic Emesa. Owing to intermarriage between the conquerors and the natives, the distinction between the Moslems according to the places of origin of these early settlers was soon lost in that drawn between the pure-blooded Arabs and the Muwallads or half-breeds. In the meantime the germs of Arabian culture had fallen upon a kindly soil, and a new school of art and letters was in process of formation in Spain. The imposing monuments of Roman, Greek, and Byzantine civilisation, which the victorious hosts of Islam found ever in their path, were not without influence upon their conceptions of the beautiful in form. The fusion of the Hispano-Goths and Arabs likewise tended to produce a commingling of spirit, and ultimately to give birth to an art and a culture racy of the soil. “According to all contemporary writers,” says Señor Rafael Contreras, “it is beyond all doubt that the style which the artists of the Renaissance called Moorish (in the sense of originating in Northern Africa) was never anything of the sort. The details so much admired on account of their richness, the vaultings and the arched hollows practised in the walls, the festoons of the arches, the _commarajias_ and _alicates_, were Spanish works finer and more delicate than those of the East. The root was originally in Arabia, but it was happily transplanted to Spain, where blossomed that beautiful flower which diffuses its perfume after a lapse of seven centuries.”