The history of Andalusia, so far as we have told it, has been a series of ups and downs. First we saw a magnificent raid, led by born soldiers, ending in an unexpected conquest. Hardly was the peninsula won, when the jealousies and divisions of the various elements that made up the invading host bade fair to destroy the harvest just reaped by the sword. Then the strong man, the born king, appeared in the person of the first Abd-er-Rahmān, and Andalusia once more became, outwardly, one dominion. "O King, live for ever!" was the conventional form of address to the Persian monarch, and one is tempted to think that its realization might be the solution of all political troubles, provided the right king was chosen for immortality. The first king of Andalusia was naturally not immortal; and the consequence of his death was what always happens when a strong repressing force is withdrawn: the people fell again into civil war and anarchy. Yet again the God-gifted king came to rescue the nation. The Great Khalif imposed law and order throughout his dominions, beat back the invader, and trod the rebel under foot. For fifty years Andalusia was a paradise of peace and prosperity; had the third Abd-er-Rahmān been immortal she might have been peaceful to this day, and we should never have heard of the persecutions of Jews and Moors, of the terrible work of the Inquisition, or even (to come to very small things) the Carlists. It is a pity that such dreams cannot be true. But the Great Khalif had not left the country unprovided with a leader. A king had saved Spain twice, and now it was a prime minister who held the State together. Almanzor, the unconquerable minister, was able to make his masterful will felt to every corner of the peninsula; but Almanzor, too, was mortal, and when he died, and (as the monk piously hoped) "was buried in hell," the land which owed him her prosperity and wealth, her perfect orderliness and security, became a prey to all the hostile forces which only his iron hand could repress. For eighty years Andalusia was torn to pieces by jealous chiefs, aggressive and quarrelsome tyrants, Moors, Arabs, Slavs, and Spaniards; and though many of the old roots of dissension had been plucked up by time, and the jealousies that arose from memories of tribal glories were sometimes forgotten because men had lost their pedigrees, there were enough rivalries, personal, racial, and religious, to make Andalusia as much a hell upon earth as even the monkish chronicler could have desired for a burial-place for Almanzor.