32 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY countries." The Berbers had long wanted Spain : Spain had long feared the Berbers. The conquest of Spain was therefore to some extent regarded as a fulfilment of the destiny of both nations.

But while the Berbers claimed to be of the same stock as the Arabs, and were admitted, as has been seen, to some degree of comradeship, they were at a very inferior stage of civilisation. The sense of difference of the cultivated Arabs was expressed by a comic poet, who suffered under a subsequent Berber dynasty for his readiness of speech. ** I saw Adam in my dream," he makes one of his characters declare, "and I said to him, * Oh, Father of Mankind ! Men generally agree that the Berbers are descended from thee.' * Yes,' replied Adam, * it is true, but none dispute that Eve was at that time divorced from me.' " Brothers, but brothers of divorce, very fairly represents the relation which for a long time existed between Berber and Arab.

Shortly after the whole of Spain was reduced there was a general Arab migration to it, and it was with this Arab migration that the high civilisation came. For about fifty years the Berbers in fitful revolution struggled against the Arabs for the sole possession of a country which they claimed that they and they alone had won. The conflict between the dynasties of the Ommeyades and the Abbassides in the East gave opportunities for the disaffected in Spain. But about the middle of the eighth century, when the Abbassides succeeded in overthrowing the dynasty of the Ommeyades in the East and possessing themselves of the Caliphate, one son of the Ommeyades e-scaped into North Africa, and, after many adventures, established himself under the name of Abdurrahman I.

upon the throne of his fathers in Spain. He ascended the throne in 757, thus separating the Caliphate of the East from the Caliphate of the West, and brilliantly opened the chapter of cultivated Arab rule in the West.

The dynasty of the Ommeyades lasted in Spain for upwards of two hundred and fifty years, and may be thought