Men who lived in such comfort and luxury might be supposed to have regarded their less fortunate fellows with easy good nature and tolerance, and according to most historians the khalifas of Cordova were benevolent despots, even towards their Christian subjects. Some Spanish writers, however, paint the lot of these last in gloomy colours, though, if we accept their accounts _in toto_, without the least reservation, there can be no question that the lot of the Christian under the Moor was very much better than the lot of the Moor under the Christian. But that standpoint would not be that of the historians in question. They are frankly partisans. The Mohammedans, they would argue, deserved what they got, because they worshipped the false Prophet; the Christians were in the right. It is more difficult to understand their vehement condemnation of the Bishop Recafred, because he forbade his flock to seek voluntary martyrdom by publicly cursing Mohammed. To curse the Arabian Prophet or anyone else is nowhere laid down as a Christian's duty, and on merely prudential grounds the prelate was surely justified in dissuading his people from pursuing a course which must finally have resulted in their complete extermination. Probably in disgust at the ingratitude and imbecility of his flock, Recafred embraced the creed of Islam, and died cursed and abominated by the people whose utter extinction he had averted. The history of the martyrs of Cordova is a curious chapter in the annals of religion. It was recently remarked of Italy that there was not enough faith to generate a heresy, and by a parity of reasoning the lamp of faith must have burnt very brightly in the Christian community of Cordova. The Saracen authorities were bewildered by the multitude of sects and factions which claimed to represent the Church of Christ, and to administer its temporalities. Councils of the Christian prelates were frequently convoked by the khalifas, but by the defeated side their decisions were always branded as schismatical or heretical. Religious debate is the favourite occupation of a decaying State, and the Mohammedans themselves had their divisions. The doctors of the law, who congregated in a special quarter of the capital, constituted themselves the critics of their rulers and of public morals. They considered culture and luxury incompatible with morality, and preached the creed of the Uncomfortable and the Unlovely with the zest of an English Puritan. One day there arose a sovereign (Hakem) more sensitive of censure than his predecessors. He burnt out the Puritan quarter and forced the zealots to take refuge in distant parts where their peculiar talents were more in demand. [Illustration: CORDOVA--A STREET]