Millenium (16 page)

And luxury, in al-Andalus, could make for truly 'fabulous profit'.
⁶⁰
The productivity of the land; the teeming industry of the cities; the influx of precious metals from mines in Africa: all had helped to estab­lish the realm of the Umayyads as Europe's premier showcase for conspicuous consumption. While it was the Caliph himself, naturally enough, who stood at the apex of the pyramid, and skimmed off most of the taxes, he was certainly not alone in profiting from the orderly conditions of his empire. Five miles west of the great caliphal palace, for instance, there sprawled a city that in its size and sophistication was no less a wonder of the age - and no less dependent for its prosperity on stable governance. Cordoba, like Leon, had originally been a Roman foundation - but the capital of al-Andalus, as befitted a city so fattened on the fruits of peace, had long since burst its ancient walls. Indeed, so utter had been the transformation of the original Christian town that even its street plan had been obliterated: for Muslims, who had never quite got the hang of carts, had no need of wide streets or squares. Instead, all was labyrinthine, a stupendous agglomeration of winding alleyways and crowded markets, of palaces and gardens, of a hundred mosques and a thousand baths. Just as Otto, emperor though he was, lacked a residence that could rival so much as the gatehouse of the palace of the Caliph, so was there nowhere else in western Europe a settlement that remotely approached the scale and splendour of Cordoba. Indeed, in the whole of Christendom, there was only a single city that could boast of being a more magnificent seat of empire - and that was Constantinople, the Queen of Cities herself.

As the caliphs of Cordoba were well aware. Back in the palmiest days of their family's greatness, when their ancestors had reigned in Damascus, emulation of the New Rome had been as much an Umayyad tradition as attempts to breach her walls; so much so, indeed, that their habit
of 'Qysariyya'
– of 'behaving like a Caesar' - had come to shock and perturb the faithful. The Umayyads themselves, befittingly imperious, had scorned all the bleats of the pious. 'None would believe in his power,' as the dynasty's founder had put it, 'if he did not behave and look like an emperor.'
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Three centuries on, and the
Basileus
remained the standard by which the Umayyads measured themselves. Byzantine diplomats, skilled as they were in the art of set­ting their enemies at one another's throats, had not failed to recognise opportunity in this. Numerous embassies had been dispatched to al- Andalus. Sedulously, these had fortified the Umayyad Caliphate in its inveterate rivalry with the Fatimids - and had presented, as seasoning to their encouragements, a whole array of splendid gifts. So it was that the Caliph's palace outside Cordoba had been beautified with treasures from the workshops of Constantinople: here a row of marble columns, there an onyx fountain adorned with sculpted beasts. So it was too that in the very holiest place in al-Andalus, the Great Mosque of Cordoba, the golden mosaics which covered the Caliph's private prayer room glittered with the unmistakable stamp of the Byzantine; courtesy of a master craftsman sent by Nicephorus, that notorious bane of the Saracens.

And yet, to the Caliph himself, the intrusion of Christian fingers upon the most sacred recesses of the mosque had implied no sacrilege. The very opposite, in fact. Turn from the aureate shimmer of the Byzantine mosaics, and fragments of other empires, of other tradi­tions, all of them blended into a regular and awe-inspiring symmetry, could be seen receding towards the daylight that blazed in through the prayer hall's nineteen doorways. Tent-like in its spareness, the ceiling of the Great Mosque was supported upon a mighty forest of pillars, some salvaged from the ruins of pagan temples, others from the demolished cathedral that had once stood on the site. The arches, which alternated brick with stone, white with red, had been constructed according to Roman methods; the horseshoe style of their curves had originally been Visigothic. No unease was felt by the architects at this wholesale appropriation of infidel traditions. Why should there have been? Just as slaves, uprooted from the House of War, could soon be brought to forget their origins, and learn to think of themselves as Muslims, nothing more, so similarly might the glories of a defeated civilisation, once they had been absorbed and transmuted into something holy, something authentically Islamic, serve to contribute to the greater glory of God. As evidence of this, no more haunting proof existed, and none more majestic, than Cordoba's mosque.

'God desires that if you do something you perfect it.'
⁶²
So Mohammed had instructed his followers; and they, raising upon the ruins of toppled empires the dominion of his faith, had fashioned out of the rubble the greatest empire of them all. The centuries had passed, and the House of Islam had fractured; yet still, the devout believed, there could be seen in its architecture a glimpse of that even more profound order, the eternal order of God. Muslim scholar­ship, in its attempt to fathom creation's mysteries, had drawn quite as profitably on the learning of infidels as the bureaucracy of the Caliphate had drawn on their wealth. Both, after all, were legitimate spoils of war. If God, in His mysterious wisdom, had granted insights to pagans, then so also had He granted to Muslims the opportunity to appropriate those insights, to assimilate them and to render them their own. Mathematicians who explored the nature of infinity did so using numerals derived from the idol worshippers of far-off India; mystics who pronounced that salvation might be attained through a mastery of the sciences depended for their philosophy upon the teachings of Pythagoras and Plato, long-dead Greek idolaters who had never heard of Mohammed. Even in al-Andalus, where overexcited scholars and their speculations had traditionally been regarded with frowns of disapproval, a sublime fantasy had begun to flourish: that the wisdom of the entire world might be comprehended. Enthusiasm for this heroic ambition had reached to the very top. Caliph Al-Hakam, in particular, had been celebrated for his obsession with books. Remarkable stories were told of the fruits of his mania. The library in the caliphal palace, it was rumoured, had ended up numbering more than four hundred thousand volumes - of which forty-four 'were employed in the mere catalogue'.
⁶³

Meanwhile, in what had once been the very wellspring of pagan wisdom, the lands of the Romans, or Rum, all appeared decay and igno­rance. In Constantinople, to be sure, there were still certain texts from antiquity preserved, the writings of ancient philosophers and savants; and some of these, on occasion, might even be dusted down and sent to the various capitals of the Caliphate as gifts. Yet the
Rum,
to Muslim eyes, appeared unworthy of their peerless heritage. Deep in the coun­tryside beyond Constantinople, one ambassador reported, there stood a temple where the ancient pagans were said to have worshipped the stars, piled so high with manuscripts that it would have taken a thou­sand camels to carry them away; and all the manuscripts were crumbling into dust. Compared with the rest of Christendom, how­ever, Constantinople appeared a veritable treasure house of learning. No books could be expected of the Saxon king, for instance. Abd al- Rahman, wishing to congratulate Otto I on his victory at the Lech, had sent him, not a rare manuscript, but gifts more calculated to impress a barbarian: 'lions and camels, ostriches and apes'.
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Indeed, in the whole of western Christendom there were few libraries more than a thousandth of the size of the Caliph's in Cordoba. So rare were books that the going rate for one on the black market might be a warhorse. Al-Hakam, had this been brought to his attention, would hardly have been surprised. Rather, it would have confirmed him in all his certi­tudes: that God had turned His back on the Christians; and that the
House of Islam would inherit the world for sure. Without learning, after all, what hope for order—and without order, what hope for any empire?

Such questions haunted many in Christendom itself. Just as Queen Gerberga, in her desperation to find some pattern in the anarchy of the times, had looked to a famous scholar for answers, so were there famous scholars, oppressed by similar anxieties, who had turned to the books of pagans. The most celebrated of them all was a peasant, as upwardly mobile as he was precocious, by the name of Gerbert; and it was whispered by his detractors that he had actually studied in Cordoba. Whether indeed he had visited the Saracens in their very lair, it was certain that he was familiar with their learning; for Gerbert, despite being a native of the town of Aurillac, in the remotest Auvergne, had completed his education in a monastery in Spain. Here, on the outermost frontier of Christendom, he had mastered branches of knowledge so exotic that later generations would brand him a necromancer: from the strange Indian numerals used by the Saracens to the operation of an abacus. Yet Gerbert was no sorcerer. His passion - one which 'boiled within him'
⁶⁵
— was for the tracing of God's order amid seeming chaos. So it was, as a teacher in Reims, that he had constructed out of delicate bronze and iron wires a series of fantastical instruments, designed to demonstrate to his pupils the orderly circling of the planets about the earth, and the turning of the universe on its poles. So it was too, in Rome, amid all the festivities for Otto's wedding to Theophanu, that Gerbert had distinguished, as though they formed their own 'ingenious mecha­nism',
⁶⁶
the filigrees spun by God to encircle and order time itself. Once there had been a Christian empire that embraced all the world, and brought to humanity the inestimable fruits of order and peace; and so there would be again. This conviction was hardly original to Gerbert; but rarely had it been held by a man of such erudition and brilliance. Born a peasant he may have been; but Gerbert's genius had served to win him the attention of emperors and kings. Back in 971, in Rome, he had tutored the young Otto II. A decade later, shortly before Otto left on his disastrous invasion of southern Italy, Gerbert had appeared before the imperial court again, this time in a formal debate with the
Reich's
most formidable scholar, the head of the cathedral school in Magdeburg - and wiped the floor with him. In 983, with Otto licking his wounds back in Rome, Gerbert was for­mally appointed to the imperial service. At such a time of crisis for the
Reich,
the conviction of Christendom's most famous scholar that a Roman Empire might still be restored was an asset not lightly to be overlooked.

Further calamities, however, would soon enough test even Gerbert's optimism to the limit. In an empire laid claim to by a single ruler, an earthquake in southern Italy might reverberate as far as the forests of the distant North; and sure enough, in the summer of 983, the Wends rose suddenly in revolt, burning the cathedrals raised over their lands by their occupiers, pursuing the Saxons 'as though they were deer',
⁶⁷
and ravaging as far as Hamburg. Although Magdeburg itself stood firm amid the firestorm, and the line of the Elbe was eventually stabilised, all that lay beyond it, won with such effort by Otto's father, was permanently lost. Otto himself, brought the news in Rome, was obliged to abandon his plans for further campaigns against the Saracens, and prepare wearily to head back north: a prospect rendered all the more agonising by the swollen state of his haemor­rhoids. Before he could so much as mount his saddle, however, he fell ill with violent diarrhoea; and on 7 December Otto II Augustus, 'Emperor of the Romans', died.

Otto's sudden end left the
Reich
rudderless. His son and heir, the third Otto in succession, was only three years old. Taken to Aachen, the little boy was consecrated king, just as Charlemagne had been crowned emperor, on Christmas Day, but was then almost immedi­ately abducted. The kidnapper, proving himself very much a chip off the old block, was none other than the son and namesake of Henry, Duke of Bavaria, whose endless machinations had caused so much trouble for Otto I. The second Henry, whose nickname of 'the Quarreller' was a fitting measure of the man, had already proved him­self inveterately rebellious - but now, sniffing opportunity as a wolf scents blood, he surpassed himself. In 984, on Easter Day, he formally laid claim to the throne. The nobility, torn between their loyalty to Otto III and their dread of being ruled by a child, havered. It appeared that the
Reich
itself was on the verge of civil war.

'Ruined, ruined,' Gerbert wailed. 'What hope can there possibly be?'
⁶⁸
But he did not despair for long. As Theophanu, having buried her husband in St Peter's, hurried northwards to beard the usurper in East Francia, Gerbert was already hard at work, writing to the princes and bishops of the
Reich,
stiffening them in their loyalty to their rightful king. So effective was his campaign that by the time Theophanu crossed the Alps, in May, Henry the Quarreller found that all his supporters had melted away. A month later, sulkily, he surrendered the infant Otto to his mother, and retired in high dudgeon to Bavaria.

Theophanu, 'that ever august empress, always to be loved, always to be cherished',
⁶⁹
was appointed regent on behalf of her son. In this role, she proved formidably effective. 'Preserving her son's rulership with a manly watchfulness, she was always benevolent to the just, but terrified and conquered rebels.'
⁷⁰
Three years after the crisis of984, she even obliged a fuming Henry, along with three other German dukes, to serve as waiters at Otto's table, in full view of the
Reich's
nobility, who had all gathered at court for the feast of Easter. Although she died in 991, while her son was still legally a minor, Theophanu had successfully secured the empire for Otto III. In September 994, he was presented with the arms of a warrior, and officially came of age.
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One year later, and he was leading his men in that traditional rite of passage for a Saxon king, a campaign against the Wends. By 996, the year of his sixteenth birthday, all that remained was to be crowned emperor - and so it was, that very spring, that Otto III announced his departure for Rome.