AN ARABIC POMPEII.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LX, Issue LX, 31 December 1910, Page 5

AN ARABIC POMPEII.

EXCAVATIONS IN SPAIN. BY CABLE— PRESS ASSOCIATION-COPYRIGHT. MADBID, Dec. 50. *"" The Spanish Government has in hand tfche .work .01 -excavating Abdral-JRah- v man's city of Azzahra, in Andalusia,, -which was abandoned after its sack by Iffixtdarites and Berbers in 1009. It ife •described as the Arabic Pompeii. Abd-al-Rahman was the sole survivor of the Ommeyad dynasty, which held -the Caliphate of the Moslem Empire for : a hundred years, until August, 750 A.D. The whole of the members of the family were slain, with the exception of this , one youth, who escaped to Spain, and -was accepted as sovereign by the Arab , tribes then ruling that country. There "he laid the foundations of a new dynasty, and established the new court of Cordova. The Caliphs of Cordova reigned in splendour for the following three centuries. The Caliphs of Spain, says Freeman, must be allowed one of the highest places among Mahometan dynasties. In the duration of their house and in the abundance of able princes which it produced, they yield only to I the Ottoman Sultans, while they rise incomparably above them in every other estimable quality. The most splendid period of the Saracen Empire in Spain was during the tenth century.