but they belong to the period when southern Spain under Mahometan rule was
at the height of its prosperity, and Arabian learning, art, and literature
made her rank among the first countries in Europe. The peninsula was
conquered by the Moors in the caliphate of Walid I, 705-715 A.D., and the
independent dynasty of the Ommiades was founded by Abderrhaman at Granada
in 755 A.D. It was from this latter date that the Spanish Moors began to
assume that special character in language, manners, and chivalric
enthusiasm which is represented in the present ballads; the spirit of
Christian knighthood is here seen blended with Arabian passion,
impetuosity, and impulsiveness, and the Spanish language has supplanted,
even among Mahometan poets, the oriental idiom. We may roughly estimate the
period in which the Moorish romance flourished as comprised in the years
between 1100 and 1600 A.D.

The term Moorish is somewhat indefinite, and is used in Spanish history as
a synonym of Saracen or Mahometan. It cannot be called a national
appellation, though originally in the Augustan age it was applied to the
dwellers in Mauretania, with whom the Romans had first come in contact when
the war with Hannibal was transferred from Italy and Spain to Africa. In
the present day, it may be applied to all the races of northwestern Africa
who have accepted Mahometanism; in which case it would include the
aborigines of that region, who live not on the coast and in towns, but in
the Atlas Mountain and the Sahara Desert. While these races, all Berbers
under different local names, are Mussulmans in profession, they are not so
highly civilized as their co-religionists who people the coast of the
Mediterranean. They live a tribal life, and are blood-thirsty and
predatory. They are of course mixed in race with the Arabians, but they are
separate in their life and institutions, and they possess no written
literature. Their oral literature is, however, abundant, though it is only
within quite recent years that it has become known to America and Europe.