THE EMPIRE OF "THE TWO SHORES" 51 other things brought by the ambassadors there was a letter enclosed in a gold case, with a portrait of the Emperor Constantine, "admirably executed" in stained glass.

Abdurrahman, moved, it is said, by the consideration that he could not afford to have any hostile power so close to the borders of Spain as Western Africa, subdued also a great portion of Africa. He thus established the power of the Western Caliphate from the borders of Negroland to the Pyrenees, and this double kingdom was known by the name of Adouatein, or *' The Two Shores." In the course of all his wars he suffered but one serious defeat, and he had the surname of ** the Victorious."

*' Never," it is said, ** was the Mohammedan Empire more prosperous than during his reign. Commerce and agriculture flourished ; the sciences and arts received a new impulse, and the revenue was increased tenfold." It was under this Abdurrahman that cotton manufacture was first established in Europe in the year 930. The Arabs also introduced the art of printing calicoes from wooden blocks.

Abdurrahman is described as the mildest and most enlightened sovereign that ever ruled. His meekness, his generosity, and his love of justice became proverbial.

None of his ancestors surpassed him in courage in the field ; he was fond of science, and the patron of the learned, with whom he loved to converse, spending those hours that he stole from the arduous labours of the administration in literary meetings, to which all the eminent poets and learned men of his court were admitted.

It is an interesting comment on this half-century of glory and prosperity that, after Abdurrahman's death, a paper was found in his own handwriting, in which those days that he had spent in happiness were carefully noted down, and, on numbering them, they were found to amount to fourteen !

Before the nominal end of the Ommeyade dynasty a usurper, Al Mansur, " called in Berbers and Zenatahs,