Toward the last of his reign there appeared in the north a mightier than he—no less than the magnificent Charlemagne, Emperor of the French, who, about the year 778, having been invited thither by a disaffected Arab captain, crossed the Pyrenees and captured several towns. He did not stay long, however, for a rising of the Saxons called him back, after he had taken Saragossa and razed the walls of Pampeluna. Perhaps his brief campaign in Spain might never have been chronicled had it not been for his disastrous rout in the Pyrenean Pass of Roncesvalles, and the death of that hero of early song, the gallant Roland, a semi–mythical figure in history. It was for a long time believed that they were infidel Saracens who attacked and destroyed Charlemagne’s rear guard in the Pass of Roncesvalles; but later investigations show them to have been Basques, descendants of the primitive Iberians, who resented this invasion of their territory, even by a grandson of the great Charles Martel, who had beaten back the Moslems in 732 and 737. Abderrahman died in 788, and was succeeded by Hicham I, and he by others of the line, whose moral tone may be indicated by the remark of one Mohammed, eldest of forty–five brothers, who, when congratulated by a favourite upon his elevation, exclaimed: “What an absurd idea to say this world would be beautiful if there were no death! If there were no death, should _I_ be reigning? Death is a good thing; my predecessor is dead; that is why I reign.” Another calif before him, who refused to treat Christian and Mussulman alike in the eyes of the law, invited seven hundred citizens of Toledo to a banquet, admitting each one separately within the doorway of his castle, when he was seized and taken to the parapet, where his head was lopped off and thrown into the fosse. But this was only a playful manifestation of power, which caused the calif to be regarded as eccentric, rather than cruel or bloodthirsty. During the reign of Abderrahman II the Spanish coast was ravaged by the Norman sea–robbers, who even sailed up the river Guadalquivir as far as Seville, and with whom the Arab navy is said to have had a great sea fight; though this is doubtful. One hundred years later—the interim being filled with three inconsequential rulers—another, Abderrahman III, carried Cordova and the califate to the summit of power. He held the government for nearly fifty years, from 912 to 961, and came to be one of the wealthiest rulers in the then known world. The city contained half a million inhabitants, one hundred thousand houses, and twenty–eight suburbs, and the surplus population was urged to dwell in a new city outside the walls, which was called Zahra, after one of Abderrahman’s six thousand wives, and which rivalled the finest city of the Orient in the beauty of its palaces.