1492 - The Year Our World Began Part 6

If putting on the thread makes you a brahmin, What does the wife put on?...Hindu, Muslim, where did they come from? 17 17

Fanaticism was more effective than skepticism in setting limits to the spread of Islam. Hindus generally resisted Muslim proselytization with tenacity. In southern India, the warlike state of Vijayanagar proclaimed its defiance in its name, which means "city of victories." In 1443 it impressed a Muslim visitor as "such that the eye has seen nothing like it," inside its sixty-mile ring of sevenfold walls. Vijayanagar's rajahs called themselves "Lords of the Eastern and Western Oceans." According to the maxims of an early sixteenth-century ruler, [a] king should improve the harbours of his country and so encourage its commerce that horses, elephants, precious gems, sandalwood, pearls and other articles are freely imported.... Make the merchants of distant foreign countries who import elephants and good horses attached to yourself by providing them with villages and decent dwellings in the city, by affording them daily audience, presents, and allowing decent profits. Then those articles will never go to your enemies.18 In practice, however, the capital was as far from the sea as you could get, and outlying provinces were hard to control. By 1485, the power of Vijayanagar's neighbors seemed not only to have arrested the expansion of the state but to threaten its very existence. Taxation from coastal emporia dried up as the frontiers withdrew inland. Muslim warlords usurped frontier areas. So a frustrated general, Saluva Narasimha, mounted a putsch and organized the state for war. The relief was temporary. After his death in 1491 renewed struggle for the throne almost extinguished the kingdom, until in 1492 another ambitious general, Narasa Nayaka, took effective power without proclaiming himself king. Thanks to these strong men, the state survived precariously to resume expansion a generation later.

Jihad was one means of spreading and consolidating Islamic appeal, or, at least, Muslim power. Aggressive sultanates justified their wars by invoking religion. In 1470, the Russian merchant Afanasyi Nikitin reported on them, describing their military might in awestruck terms and recounting some of their raids against Hindu lands. His account of what he called his "sinful wanderings" is skewed by his renunciation of his merchant's vocation-he insists that the pepper and textiles of India are valueless-and by terrible guilt that overcame him at the compromises and evasions of faith he was forced to make in order to trade and even to survive in the realms of rulers who prided themselves on Muslim fanaticism. He frequently protests-too much-that he remained faithful to Christianity, but his own evidence makes it plain that he had to renounce his religion, at least outwardly. The main purpose of his book seems to be solemnly to warn fellow Christians not to trade in India, in peril of their souls. After many months in the Bahmanid kingdom in the Deccan, India, he was unable to compute the date of Easter.

I have nothing with me; no books whatever; those that I had taken from Russia were lost when I was robbed. And I forgot the Christian faith and the Christian festivals and knew not Easter nor Christmas...for I am between the two faiths.19 Nikitin reported that the Bahmanids commanded an army a million strong, armed with firearms, including heavy cannon. The sultan's armor was of gold inlaid with sapphires and diamonds. His counselors were borne through the streets on couches of gold. Hundreds of armor-clad elephants accompanied him, each bearing an armored howdah bristling with gunmen. The state was indeed near the height of its power. Under the enterprising favorite Mahmud Gawan, in the 1460s and 1470s the sultan's authority grew at the expense of the n.o.bles, and the frontiers at the expense of neighbors. But the campaigns both inside and outside the kingdom provoked resentment and overtaxed the strength of the state. In 1482 the sultan had the minister murdered, allegedly because he "dared to come in our way and he tried to join forces with our enemies." 20 20 His master soon followed him to the grave, leaving the throne to a twelve-year-old, s.h.i.+habu'd-din Mahmud. The power struggles that followed among the ministers and generals unleashed ma.s.sacres, provoked a popular rebellion, and made it easy for provincial power brokers to usurp authority and, in effect, secede from the realm. By 1492 the Bahmanid kingdom was in a state of fission. Over the next couple of years, s.h.i.+habu'd-din rea.s.serted his authority in a series of victories against recalcitrant subordinates-but only temporarily arrested the dissolution. His master soon followed him to the grave, leaving the throne to a twelve-year-old, s.h.i.+habu'd-din Mahmud. The power struggles that followed among the ministers and generals unleashed ma.s.sacres, provoked a popular rebellion, and made it easy for provincial power brokers to usurp authority and, in effect, secede from the realm. By 1492 the Bahmanid kingdom was in a state of fission. Over the next couple of years, s.h.i.+habu'd-din rea.s.serted his authority in a series of victories against recalcitrant subordinates-but only temporarily arrested the dissolution.

The strength of the Muslim sultanate of Gujarat peaked at roughly the same time. Mahmud Shah Begarha (14691511) conquered Champaner from its Hindu masters in 1484 and began rebuilding the city on the grand scale still visible in the sumptuous ruins of palaces, bazaars, squares, gardens, mosques, irrigation tanks, and ornamental ponds. There were workshops producing fine silk, textiles, and arms, and Hindu temples were allowed outside the walls. The sultan's mightiest subject, Malik Ayaz, came to Gujarat in the 1480s as a Russian slave famous for valor and archery in the entourage of a master who presented him to the sultan. Freed for gallantry in battle-or, in another version of the story, for killing a hawk that had besmirched the sultan's head with its droppings-he received the captaincy of an area that included the ancient site of a harborside settlement, just reemerging, thanks to Malik's immediate predecessors, from centuries of acc.u.mulated jungle. He turned Diu into an impressively fortified emporium and induced s.h.i.+ppers from the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, Melaka, China, and Arabia to use it as their gateway to northern India. His style of life reflected the value of the trade. When he visited the sultan, he had nine hundred horses in his train. He employed a thousand water carriers and served Indian, Persian, and Turkish cuisine to his guests off china plates.

No state in India at the time could compare with the sultanate of Delhi, which began in the tradition of the many hegemonies that invading dynasts had founded in India; it was more of a racket than a state, a supremacy shared among predatory clan members and ethnic cronies. When Bahlul, the founding father, arrived from Afghanistan, he wrote home advertising the wealth of India and enticing his kinsmen to abjure their native poverty and follow him. They swarmed in-it seemed to locals-"like ants or locusts." But the size and diversity of his domains and opportunities soon had Bahlul recruiting help more widely. He had twenty thousand Mongols in his service. As the frontiers widened, it became increasingly prudent and increasingly necessary to employ natives-as long as they were or would be Muslims.

Bahlul's successor, Sikandar Lodi, who was on the throne in 1492, adopted indigenous court rituals and "favoured n.o.bles and shaikhs from Arabia, Persia, and various parts of Hind." 21 21 Sikandar Lodi's maternal grandfather was a commoner-a goldsmith-a taint that almost cost him the throne. In matters of manners and morals he had high standards and tough practices. Like all Muslim rulers of the time, he commissioned annalists who celebrated him so lavishly as to undermine all credibility-excusing, for instance, as "for the sake of his health" the toping of this supposedly uncompromising enforcer of the sharia. He certainly exempted himself from his own rules, including the prohibition of shaving. He performed miracles, commanded jinns, and had a magic lamp that illuminated for him news of far-off events. Sikandar Lodi's maternal grandfather was a commoner-a goldsmith-a taint that almost cost him the throne. In matters of manners and morals he had high standards and tough practices. Like all Muslim rulers of the time, he commissioned annalists who celebrated him so lavishly as to undermine all credibility-excusing, for instance, as "for the sake of his health" the toping of this supposedly uncompromising enforcer of the sharia. He certainly exempted himself from his own rules, including the prohibition of shaving. He performed miracles, commanded jinns, and had a magic lamp that illuminated for him news of far-off events.22 He flogged n.o.bles who besmirched a polo match by brawling. He deflected the erotic attentions of an overadmiring sheikh by singeing his beard. He flogged n.o.bles who besmirched a polo match by brawling. He deflected the erotic attentions of an overadmiring sheikh by singeing his beard.

His fanaticism disgusted even his own chroniclers. He destroyed Hindu temples, smashed images, proscribed rites. When a sheikh disputed the justice of prohibiting Hindus' sacred baths, the sultan raised his sword against the man in anger. His vocation was as a conqueror: that is why he called himself Sikandar-the local form of the name of Alexander the Great. He got as far as annexing Bihar and Dholpur. But he left the state overextended and impoverished. He chopped up Hindu idols and gave the pieces to Muslim butchers to use for weighing meat. He turned temples into mosques and madra.s.sas. He burned a Hindu holy man alive for saying, "Islam and Hindu Dharma are both equally acceptable to G.o.d if followed with a sincere heart." He frequently razed temples and erected mosques in their place, as evidenced by his behavior at Mandrail, Utgir, and Narwar. He issued orders, backed by threats of punishment by death, against the Hindu custom of bathing and shaving to mark the midsummer festival.23 Aggression, however, probably contributed less to the spread of Islam than peaceful proselytization: acculturation by trade, and the slow, sometimes unrewarding work of missionaries. In what would become Malaysia and Indonesia, as in Africa, the other great arena of Islamic expansion at the time, the means of propagation was the "jihad of words." 24 24 Trade shunted living examples of Muslim devotion between cities and installed Muslims as port supervisors, customs officials, and agents to despotic monopolists. Trading states speckled the Swahili coast, but the conventional notion that they housed oceangoing peoples is false. For generations, the Swahili responded to the racism of Western masters by cultivating a non-African image, emphasizing their links of culture and commerce with Arabia and India. After independence, some of their hinterland neighbors took revenge, treating them as colonists, rather as the inland communities of Liberia and Sierra Leone treated the descendants of resettled slaves in Monrovia and Freetown as an alien and justly resented elite. In Kenya, political demagogues threatened to expel the Swahili, as if they were foreign intruders. Yet the Swahili language, though peppered with Arabic loanwords, is closely akin to other Bantu languages. The Swahili came to the coast from the interior, perhaps thousands of years ago, and retained links with the hinterland that their trade with visitors from the Indian Ocean never displaced.

The coastal location of Swahili cities conveys a misleading impression of why the sea was important to them: they were sited for proximity to fresh water, landward routes, and sources of widely traded coral as much as for ocean access. The elite usually married their daughters to business partners inland rather than to foreign sojourners. Few cities had good anchorages. More than half had poor harbors, or none at all. The town of Gedi, which covered eighteen acres inside ten-foot-high walls and had a palace over a hundred feet wide, was four miles from the sea. Swahili traders plied their own coasts and frequented their own hinterlands, acquiring gold, timber, honey, civet, rhinoceros horn, and ivory to sell to the Arabs, Indians, and Gujaratis who carried them over the ocean. They were cla.s.sic middlemen who seem to have calculated that the risks of transoceanic trading were not worthwhile as long as customers came to their coasts.

Visiting Portuguese in the early sixteenth century noticed the love-hate relations.h.i.+p that bound the Swahili to the hinterland. On the one hand, the two zones needed each other for trade; on the other, religious enmity between the Muslims and their pagan neighbors committed them to war. This, thought Duarte Barbosa, was why the coastal dwellers had "cities well walled with stone and mortar, inasmuch as they are often at war with the Heathen of the mainland." 25 25 There were material causes of conflict, too. The Swahili needed plantations, acquired at hinterland communities' expense, to grow food, and slaves to serve them. Coastal and interior peoples exchanged raids and demands for tribute as well as regular trade. When Portuguese observers arrived in the early sixteenth century, they got the impression that Mombasa, the greatest of the Swahili port cities, lived in awe of its neighbors, the "savage," poison-arrow-toting Mozungullos, who had "neither law nor king nor any other interest in life except theft, robbery, and murder." There were material causes of conflict, too. The Swahili needed plantations, acquired at hinterland communities' expense, to grow food, and slaves to serve them. Coastal and interior peoples exchanged raids and demands for tribute as well as regular trade. When Portuguese observers arrived in the early sixteenth century, they got the impression that Mombasa, the greatest of the Swahili port cities, lived in awe of its neighbors, the "savage," poison-arrow-toting Mozungullos, who had "neither law nor king nor any other interest in life except theft, robbery, and murder." 26 26 But Islam provided the standard excuse for hostilities, if not their real cause. The religion was well established among the urban Swahili, after nearly half a millennium of proselytization by visiting merchants and the Sufis and sheikhs they sometimes carried in their s.h.i.+ps. By the early fourteenth century, visiting Muslims commonly praised their orthodoxy. It was probably not until the sixteenth century, when Portuguese piracy disrupted the Indian Ocean trade of the Swahili coast, that local Islam began to diverge from the mainstream. But Islam provided the standard excuse for hostilities, if not their real cause. The religion was well established among the urban Swahili, after nearly half a millennium of proselytization by visiting merchants and the Sufis and sheikhs they sometimes carried in their s.h.i.+ps. By the early fourteenth century, visiting Muslims commonly praised their orthodoxy. It was probably not until the sixteenth century, when Portuguese piracy disrupted the Indian Ocean trade of the Swahili coast, that local Islam began to diverge from the mainstream.

For some cities, the ocean was all-important. Kilwa was one of the greatest of Swahili emporia because the monsoon made it accessible to transoceanic traders in a single season. Ports farther south, like Sofala, though rich in gold, were accessible only after a laborious wait, usually in Kilwa, for the wind to turn. Merchants from Gujarat seem rarely to have bothered to go farther south than Mombasa or Malindi, where merchants congregated with products from all along the coast as far as Sofala. The Gujaratis paid for their purchases with fine Indian textiles of silk and cotton.

On the opposite sh.o.r.e of the ocean, in Southeast Asia, it was harder for Islam to penetrate agrarian states with only limited interest in long-range trade. In what came to be called Indochina, the Khmer kingdom was a self-contained unit, which produced enough rice to feed its people. The rulers never showed any interest in going into business in their own right, though around the turn of the century they s.h.i.+fted their capital to what is now Phnom Penh in an apparent effort to increase their control over the revenue from maritime trade. Vietnam-which was culturally and physically close to China-adopted policies actively hostile to overseas commerce. Le Thanh Ton, who ruled from 1460 to 1497, forbade the waste of land, broke up great estates, colonized frontier zones with prisoners and demobilized soldiers, and gave fiscal exemptions to diggers of ditches and planters of mulberries. He almost doubled the size of his kingdom by southward conquests that took the frontier beyond Qui Nonh. He issued regulations that seem too perfect ever to have been put into practice, in which all his subjects were arrayed in order of rank under the rule of royally appointed bureaucrats. He scattered temples of literature around the country, where aspiring mandarins could study the works of Confucius and prepare for civil-service examinations on the Chinese pattern. While empowering Confucian bureaucrats and imposing a strict law code inspired by Confucius, Le held on to popular sensibilities by representing himself as the reincarnation of a heroic ancestor.

Native kings in the region had a lot to lose if they committed to Islam: the awe inspired by reincarnation, the role of preceding the Buddhist millennium or incarnating a Hindu deity, the custodians.h.i.+p of relics sacred to Hindus and Buddhists. Ramathibodi II, for instance, who came to the throne of Ayutthaya-the kingdom that became Siam-in 1491, engaged in trials of magic power with neighboring kings. Khmer kings.h.i.+p relied on the notion that kings were Buddhas or incarnations of s.h.i.+va. In a region of divine kings.h.i.+p and agrarian states, it was hard for Islam to get a toehold: neither merchants nor missionaries could exert much influence.

The Malay world that flanked Indochina and lay offsh.o.r.e was more permeable, full of trading states and seafaring traditions. As the sultan of Melaka observed in 1468, "to master the blue oceans people must engage in trade, even if their countries are barren." 27 27 Camens, who ranged the East and celebrated it in verse in the late sixteenth century, described the Malay world: Camens, who ranged the East and celebrated it in verse in the late sixteenth century, described the Malay world:

Malacca see before, where ye shall pitch Your great Emporium, and your Magazins: The Rendezvous of all that Ocean round For Merchandizes rich that there abound.

From this ('tis said) the Waves impetuous course, Breaking a pa.s.sage through from Main to main, Samatra's n.o.ble Isle of old did force, Which then a Neck of Land therewith did chain: That this was Chersonese till that divorce, And from the wealthy mines, that there remain, The Epithite of "Golden" had annext: Some think, it was the Ophyr in the Text.28

Muslim merchants frequented the region for centuries before any natives accepted Islam. Some of them formed communities in port cities. Missionaries followed: scholars in search of patronage, discharging the Muslim's obligation to proselytize on the way; spiritual athletes in search of exercise, anxious to challenge native shamans in contests of ascetic ostentation and supernatural power. In some areas Sufis made crucial contributions. They could empathize with the sort of popular animism and pantheism that "finds Him closer than the veins of one's neck." 29 29 As missionaries, Sufis were the most effective agents. As always with conversion stories, it is hard to distinguish miracle tales, invented in retrospect to hallow events, from real evidence. The legends of conversions engineered by Sufis are untrustworthy, partly because they are often warped by the writers' wider agendas, and partly because they tend to be shaped by traditional topoi. As missionaries, Sufis were the most effective agents. As always with conversion stories, it is hard to distinguish miracle tales, invented in retrospect to hallow events, from real evidence. The legends of conversions engineered by Sufis are untrustworthy, partly because they are often warped by the writers' wider agendas, and partly because they tend to be shaped by traditional topoi.

Sacred autobiography is predictably full of stories of childish orchard raiding and youthful peccadilloes, suddenly visited darkness, suddenly glimpsed light. The crucial questions relate to the self-reprofiling of whole societies. This is a process, still little understood, by which the term "Islam" becomes part of the collective self-designation of whole communities, embracing numbers of people who have never had a conversion experience or anything like it. Underlying collective realignments of this sort are further, remoter processes, by which Islam captures elites or becomes part of the landscape of life in a particular society or-if I may be permitted another metaphor-a thread in the fabric of social ident.i.ty. For most people in the society that plays host to the new religion, it commonly involves pa.s.sive reception of new doctrines and devotions, without any active commitment.

According to tradition, the first ruler to embrace Islam in Southeast Asia, in Pasai, on Sumatra, in the late thirteenth century, received the message of the faith in a dream. He then invited a holy man over to complete his conversion. In the following century, other Sumatran states followed suit, and there were Muslim-led states on the Malayan mainland. Early in the fifteenth century, Melaka's ruler adopted Islam. From the end of the century conversions multiplied, spread by dynastic marriages or by a radiationlike process in which Sufis fanned outward from each successive center to which they came. Melaka seems to have provided manpower for the conversion of states in Java, which in turn, around the beginning of the new century, did the same job for Ternate in the Moluccas, from where missionaries continued to neighboring islands. Provincial rulers guaranteed the flow of revenue to the sultans' courts in exchange for the unmolested exercise of power. "As for us who administer territory," said a n.o.bleman in a Malay chronicle, "what concern is that of yours?...What we think should be done we do, for the ruler is not concerned with the difficulties we administrators encounter. He only takes account of the good results we achieve." 30 30 Shortly before his death in 1478, the Sufi proselytizer Abu-al-Mewahib al-Shadili summarized what he called the "maxims of illumination"-Qawanin Hikam al-Ishraq. Sufis, he thought, were an elite: others were "people of deviation and innovation." Sufis, he thought, were an elite: others were "people of deviation and innovation." 31 31 Every one of his maxims began with a text from the Quran. Mystical experience was like memory. To be "immersed in the sea of unity" with G.o.d, the mystic had to efface all thoughts of his attributes, concentrate on his essence, and "then the distance that is between him and you is effaced." Every one of his maxims began with a text from the Quran. Mystical experience was like memory. To be "immersed in the sea of unity" with G.o.d, the mystic had to efface all thoughts of his attributes, concentrate on his essence, and "then the distance that is between him and you is effaced." 32 32 Abandon intelligence, reason, experiment, and authority, al-Shadili urged. Abandon intelligence, reason, experiment, and authority, al-Shadili urged.33 Lose consciousness of the universe. Practice permanent penance, for "the repentance of ordinary men is a pa.s.sing mood." Sufis could approach enlightenment because they had come to acknowledge the power of evil over them and the need to repent of it. The author quoted the Gospels as well as the Quran. Lose consciousness of the universe. Practice permanent penance, for "the repentance of ordinary men is a pa.s.sing mood." Sufis could approach enlightenment because they had come to acknowledge the power of evil over them and the need to repent of it. The author quoted the Gospels as well as the Quran.34 Al-Shadili recommended watchfulness as a means to identification with G.o.d. "The thought of Truth's sentinel came to the heart of a servant who was lonely among men." "There pa.s.sed through the heart and thought of a longing person a glimpse of the splendour and beauty of the loved one which turned him like unto a person bewitched by the sorcery of the Babylonians: all this took place when his longings and nightingales of joy were loosed." The author was glib with images from the mystical repertoire common to many cultures and dangerous in Islam-likening experience of G.o.d to physical love, pagan magic, even drunkenness. A mystical experience overcame him in a garden, when the trees rustled:

The winds of union with them blew at daybreak, With gusts of yearning in the heart.

The branch of love merrily shook in me, When fruits of love fell here and there.

Suns of union with penetrating rays Pierced the awnings of the veils.

Clear joy shone over us and thus sparkled The face of compa.s.sion which dispelled all blame.35

While Columbus was beginning preparations for his first transoceanic voyage, one of the greatest mystics of the age died in what is now Afghanistan. Nur ad-Din Abd ar-Rahman Jami was a consummate poet-the last great Persian poet, some say, and the biographer of a long line of Sufis. He was one of the most celebrated intellectuals of the age, whose fame in Asia was wider and deeper than any mere hero of the Renaissance could have achieved, at the time, within the narrow limits of Christendom. The rulers of the Ottoman Empire and the heirs of the Mongol khans competed unsuccessfully for his services as a political adviser: he preferred a life of art and meditation. Some of his works were translated into Chinese and sustained considerable influence over the next two hundred years in Buddhist as well as Muslim mysticism. Besides accounts of his mystical experiences, he wrote an explanation of mystical principles, called Gleams Gleams ( (Lawa'ih). Sense veiled reality. The self was a distraction: "[T]ry to conceal yourself," he recommended, "from your own gaze." 36 36 Learning was a snare-a judgment many Franciscan mystics in Europe would have endorsed. "How can love," he demanded, "appear from the folds of your books?" Learning was a snare-a judgment many Franciscan mystics in Europe would have endorsed. "How can love," he demanded, "appear from the folds of your books?" 37 37 He would have agreed with most Western mystics on another point: mystics had to beware of self-indulgence and make love practical. Jami advised, "Don't count the Real as apart from the world, for the world is in the Real, and in the world the Real is none but the world." He would have agreed with most Western mystics on another point: mystics had to beware of self-indulgence and make love practical. Jami advised, "Don't count the Real as apart from the world, for the world is in the Real, and in the world the Real is none but the world." 38 38 For himself, however, his goals were otherworldly. The world was hardly worth contemplation. He dismissed it with a shrug-almost a smirk-of ennui: "I've had my fill of every loveliness not eternal." For himself, however, his goals were otherworldly. The world was hardly worth contemplation. He dismissed it with a shrug-almost a smirk-of ennui: "I've had my fill of every loveliness not eternal." 39 39 Jami was aware that annihilation meant the eclipse of consciousness: "Annihilation of annihilation is included in annihilation.... If you are conscious of the tip of a hair and speak of annihilation's road, you've left the road." Jami was aware that annihilation meant the eclipse of consciousness: "Annihilation of annihilation is included in annihilation.... If you are conscious of the tip of a hair and speak of annihilation's road, you've left the road." 40 40 Even religion was irrelevant to the mystic, whose "custom is annihilation and whose rule poverty." When you achieve union with G.o.d, why consort with mullahs? The same sort of thought occurred to Christian mystics. Even religion was irrelevant to the mystic, whose "custom is annihilation and whose rule poverty." When you achieve union with G.o.d, why consort with mullahs? The same sort of thought occurred to Christian mystics.

His acknowledged masterpiece was his immensely long last poem, Yusuf and Zulaikha, Yusuf and Zulaikha, a searing love story that encodes a religion of Jami's devising, which, without any overt tampering with Islam, is utterly personal, and takes stunning liberties with the Quran. He takes the Quranic story of Yusuf-the biblical Joseph-and the seductress he encountered in his flight from his abusive brethren, and turns it into a treatise on love as a sort of ladder of Bethel-a means of ascent to personal union with G.o.d. The author begins by addressing readers who seek mystical experience. "Go away and fall in love," he counsels. "Then come back and ask me." Loving union is a way of connecting with G.o.d, "who quickens the heart and fills the soul with rapture." Zulaikha first sees her future lover in a vision so powerful that l.u.s.t impedes her from loving him truly. While the world goggles at his splendor and beauty, his wife tortures herself with reproaches and longs for death. If she had grasped the inward form instead of embracing the body that conceals it, she would have found that conjugal love can be a means of ascent to G.o.d. a searing love story that encodes a religion of Jami's devising, which, without any overt tampering with Islam, is utterly personal, and takes stunning liberties with the Quran. He takes the Quranic story of Yusuf-the biblical Joseph-and the seductress he encountered in his flight from his abusive brethren, and turns it into a treatise on love as a sort of ladder of Bethel-a means of ascent to personal union with G.o.d. The author begins by addressing readers who seek mystical experience. "Go away and fall in love," he counsels. "Then come back and ask me." Loving union is a way of connecting with G.o.d, "who quickens the heart and fills the soul with rapture." Zulaikha first sees her future lover in a vision so powerful that l.u.s.t impedes her from loving him truly. While the world goggles at his splendor and beauty, his wife tortures herself with reproaches and longs for death. If she had grasped the inward form instead of embracing the body that conceals it, she would have found that conjugal love can be a means of ascent to G.o.d.

She begins to glimpse the truths of mysticism-the possibilities of self-realization through self-immersion in love, but carnality obstructs her. Jami says, "As long as love has not attained perfection, lovers' sole preoccupation is to satisfy desire.... They willingly p.r.i.c.k the beloved with a hundred thorns." Zulaikha has to go through a series of terrible purgations, which are like the cla.s.sic stages of mystical ascent: despair, renunciation, blindness, oblivion. She endures repeated rejection by Yusuf and loses everything that once mattered to her-her wealth, her beauty, and her sight-before the lovers can be united. Zulaikha perceives the mystic truth:

In solitude, where Being signless dwelt, And all the universe still dormant lay Concealed in selflessness, One Being was Exempt from "I" or "Thou"-ness, and apart From all duality; Beauty Supreme, Unmanifest, except unto Itself By Its own light, yet fraught with power to charm The souls of all; concealed in the Unseen, An Essence pure, unstained by aught of ill.41

Carnal love shatters like a graven idol. Yusuf's real beauty strikes his inamorata afresh, like a light so dazzling that he seems lost in it.

From Everlasting Beauty, which emerged From realms of purity to s.h.i.+ne upon The worlds, and all the souls which dwell therein.

One gleam fell from It on the universe And on the angels, and this single ray Dazzled the angels, till their senses whirled Like the revolving sky. In diverse forms Each mirror showed it forth, and everywhere Its praise was chanted in new harmonies.

The cherubim, enraptured, sought for songs Of praise. The spirits who explore the depths Of boundless seas, wherein the heavens swim Like some small boat, cried with one mighty voice, "Praise to the Lord of all the universe!"42

Nowadays, most people, I suspect, will find it hard to think of mysticism as modern. It was, at least, a gateway to one of the great mansions of modernity: the enhanced sense of self-the individualism, sometimes edging narcissism or egotism, that elbows community to the edge of our priorities. Without the rise of individualism, it would be hard to imagine a world organized economically for "enlightened self-interest" or politically along lines of "one person, one vote." Modern novels of self-discovery, modern psychology, feel-good values, existential angst, and the self-obsessions of the "me generation" would all be unthinkable. Liberation from self-abnegation had to begin-or at least have one of its starting points-in religious minds, because G.o.dly inst.i.tutions, in the Middle Ages, were the major obstacles to self-realization. The watchfulness of fellow congregants disciplined desire. The collective pursuit of salvation diminished individuals' power. The authority of G.o.dly establishments overrode individual judgment. Mysticism was a way out of these constraints. For wors.h.i.+ppers with a hotline to G.o.d, inst.i.tutional religion is unnecessary. Sufis, Catholic and Orthodox mystics, and Protestant reformers were all, therefore, engaged, in one sense, in the same project: firing the synapses that linked them to divine energy; freeing themselves to make up their own minds; putting clerisy in its place. Whatever modernity is, the high valuation of the individual is part of it. The mystics' role in making modernity has been overlooked, but by teaching us to be aware of our individual selves, they helped to make us modern.

Chapter 10.

"The Fourth World"

Indigenous Societies in the Atlantic and the Americas March 6: A young Montezuma celebrates tlacaxipehualiztli, the spring fertility festival, and the spring fertility festival, and witnesses the sacrifice of human captives-their hearts ripped out, their bodies rolled down the high temple steps.

In 1493, when Columbus got back from his first voyage, no one-least of all the explorer himself-knew where he had been. In the received picture of the planet, the earth was an island, divided between three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa. For most European scholars, it was hard to believe that what they called "a fourth part of the world" existed. (Some Native American peoples, by coincidence, called the earth they trod "the fourth world"-to distinguish it from the heavens, the waters, and the underground darkness.) Humanist geographers, who knew ancient writers' speculations that an "antipodean" continent awaited discovery, groped toward the right conclusion about what Columbus had found. Others a.s.sumed-more consistently with the evidence-that he had simply stumbled on "another Canary Island": another bit of an archipelago that Spanish conquistadores were already struggling to incorporate into the dominions of the crown of Castile. This was a pardonable error: Columbus's newfound lands were on the lat.i.tude of the Canaries. Their inhabitants, by Columbus's own account, were "like the Canary Islanders" in color and culture. Despite Columbus's urgent search for valuable trade goods, the new lands seemed, even to the discoverer, more likely to be viable as sources of slaves and locations for sugar-planting-just as the Canaries had been.

Guaman Poma's early-seventeenth-century drawing of work on a rope bridge under the supervision of the Inca inspector of bridges, whose ear-spools denote his elite status.

F. Guaman Poma de Ayala, Nueva coro nica y buen gobierno (codex pe ruvien ill.u.s.tre) Nueva coro nica y buen gobierno (codex pe ruvien ill.u.s.tre) (Paris: Inst.i.tut d'Ethnologie, 1936). (Paris: Inst.i.tut d'Ethnologie, 1936).

The conquest of the Canary Islands was a vital part of the context of Columbus. The archipelago was a laboratory for conquests in the Americas: an Atlantic frontier, inhabited by culturally baffling strangers, who seemed "savage" to European beholders; a new environment, uneasily adaptable to European ways of life; a land that could be planted with new crops, exploited with a new, plantation-style economy, settled with colonists, and wrenched into new, widening patterns of trade.

In the Canaries, the conquest of the Atlantic world was already under way when Columbus set sail. The core of the financial circle that paid for his first transatlantic voyage formed when a consortium of Sevillan bankers and royal treasury officials combined to meet the costs of conquering Grand Canary in 147883. Columbus's point of departure was the westernmost port of the archipelago, San Sebastian de la Gomera, which became fully secure only when a Spanish army uprooted the last native resistance on that island in 1489. The Spaniards did not reckon the conquest of the most intractable islands as complete until 1496.

The natives-all of whom disappeared in the colonial era owing to conquest, enslavement, disease, and a.s.similation-were among the last descendants of the pre-Berber inhabitants of North Africa. For a sense of what they were like, the nearest surviving parallels are the Imraguen and Znaga-the poor, marginal fis.h.i.+ng folk who cling to the coastal rim of the Sahara today, surviving only by occupying places no one else wants. Along with the advantages of isolation, the islanders enjoyed-before Europeans arrived-a mixed economy, based on pastoralism supplemented by farming cereals in small plots, from which they made gofio gofio-slops of powdered, toasted grain mixed with milk or soup or water that are still eaten everywhere in the islands but appreciated, as far as I know, nowhere else. They made a virtue of isolation, abandoning navigation and barely communicating from island to island, even though some islands lie within sight of one another-rather like the ancient Tasmanians or Chatham Islanders or Easter Islanders, who imposed isolation on themselves. They forswore the technology that took them to their homes, as if they were consciously withdrawing from the world, like dropouts of a bygone era. Insulation from the rest of the world, however, has disadvantages. Contact with other cultures stimulates what we call development, whereas isolation leads to stagnation. The material culture of the Canarians was rudimentary. They lived in caves or crudely extemporized huts. They were armed, when they had to face European invaders, only with sticks and stones.

The ferocity and long-sustained success of their resistance gives the lie to the notion that superior European technology guaranteed rapid success against "primitives" and "savages." Adventurous European individuals and ambitious European states launched expeditions at intervals from the 1330s. They depleted some islands by enslaving captives, but they could not establish any enduring presence until a systematic effort in the early fifteenth century, launched by adventurers from Normandy, secured control of the poorest and least-populated islands of Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, and Hierro. The conquerors installed precarious but lasting colonies, which, after some hesitation and oscillation between the crowns of France, Portugal, and Aragon, ended owing allegiance to Castile.

After that, the conquest stalled again. The remaining islands repelled many expeditions from Portugal and Castile. In the midfifteenth century, the Peraza family-minor n.o.blemen of Seville who had acquired the lords.h.i.+p of some islands, and claimed the right of conquest over the rest-gained a footing in Gomera, where they built a fort and exacted tribute from the natives, without introducing European colonists. Repeated rebellions culminated in 1488, when the natives put the inc.u.mbent lord, Hernan Peraza, to death, and the Spanish crown had to send an army to restore order. In revenge, the insurgents were executed or enslaved in droves, with dubious legality, as "rebels against their natural lord." The Spaniards put a permanent garrison on the island. The treatment of the natives, meanwhile, touched tender consciences in Castile. The monarchs commissioned jurists and theologians to inquire into the case. The inquiry recommended the release of the slaves, and many of them eventually returned to the archipelago to help colonize other islands. Their native land, however, was now ripe for transformation. In the next decade, European investors turned it over to sugar production.

Ferdinand and Isabella, who were not yet committed to the exhausting effort of conquering Granada, thought intervention worthwhile because of Castile's rivalry with Portugal, which made the Canaries seem important. Castilian interlopers in the African Atlantic had long attracted Portuguese complaints, but the war of 147479, in which Afonso V of Portugal challenged Ferdinand and Isabella for the Castilian throne, intensified Castilian activity. The monarchs were openhanded with licenses for voyages of piracy or carriage of contraband. Genoese merchant houses with branches in Seville and Cadiz and an eye on the potential sugar business were keen to invest in these enterprises. The main action of the war took place on land, in northern Castile, but a "small war" at sea in the lat.i.tude of the Canaries accompanied it. Castilian privateers broke into Portugal's monopoly of trade and slaving on the Guinea coast. Portuguese attacks menaced Castilian outposts in the Canary Islands. The value of the unconquered islands of the archipelago-Grand Canary, Tenerife, and La Palma, which were the largest and most promising economically-became obvious. When Ferdinand and Isabella sent a force to resume the conquest in 1478, a Portuguese expedition in seven caravels was already on its way. The Castilian intervention was a preemptive strike.

The Canary Islands.

Other, longer-maturing reasons also influenced the royal decision. First, the monarchs had other rivals than the Portuguese to keep in mind. The Perazas' lords.h.i.+p had descended by marriage to Diego de Herrera, a minor n.o.bleman of Seville, who fancied himself as a conquistador. His claim to have made va.s.sals of nine native "kings" or chiefs of Tenerife and two on Grand Canary was, to say the least, exaggerated. He raided the islands in the hope of extracting tribute by terror, and attempted, in the manner of previous would-be conquistadores, to dominate them by erecting intimidating turrets. Such large, populous, and indomitable islands, however, would not succ.u.mb to the private enterprise of a provincial hidalgo. Effective conquest and systematic exploitation demanded concentrated resources and heavy investment. These were more readily available at the royal court.

Even had Herrera been able to complete the conquest, it would have been unwise for the monarchs to let him do so. He was not above intrigue with the Portuguese, and he was typical of the truculent paladins whose power in peripheral regions was an affront to the crown. Almost since the first conquerors seized power in the Canaries, lords and kings had been in dispute over the limits of royal authority in the islands. Profiting from a local rebellion against seigneurial authority in 147576-one of a series of such rebellions-Ferdinand and Isabella decided to enforce their suzerainty and, in particular, the most important element in it: the right to be the ultimate court of appeal throughout the colonies of the archipelago. In November 1476 they launched an inquiry into the legal basis of lords.h.i.+p in the Canaries. The results were enshrined in an agreement between seigneur and suzerain in October 1477: Herrera's rights were unimpeachable, saving the superior lords.h.i.+p of the crown; but "for certain just and reasonable causes," which were never specified, the right of conquest should revert to Ferdinand and Isabella.

Beyond the political reasons for intervening in the islands, there were economic motives. As always in the history of European meddling in the African Atlantic, gold was the spur. According to a privileged chronicler, King Ferdinand was interested in the Canaries because he wanted to open communications with "the mines of Ethiopia" 1 1-a general name, at the time, for Africa. The Portuguese denied him access to the new gold sources on the underside of the African bulge, where the trading post of So Jorge da Mina opened in 1482. Their refusal must have stimulated the search for alternative sources and helps explain the emphasis Columbus's journals placed on the need for gold. Meanwhile, the growth of demand for sugar and dyes in Europe made the Canaries worth conquering for their own sake: dyes were among the natural products of the archipelago; sugar was the boom industry European colonists introduced.

The conquest was almost as hard under royal auspices as under those of Diego de Herrera. Native resistance was partly responsible. Finance and manpower proved elusive. One of Ferdinand's and Isabella's chroniclers could hardly bring himself to mention the campaigns in the Canaries without complaining about the expense. Gradually, although the monarchs' aims in arrogating the right of conquest included the desire to exclude private power from the islands and keep it in the "public" domain, they had to allow what would now be called "public-private partners.h.i.+ps" to play a role. Formerly the monarchs had financed the war by selling indulgences-doc.u.ments bishops issued to penitents remitting the penalties their sins incurred in this world. Ferdinand and Isabella claimed and exercised the right to sell these to pay for wars against non-Christian enemies. But as the war dragged on and revenues fell, they made would-be conquerors find their own funds. Increasingly, instead of wages, conquistadores received pledges of conquered land. Instead of reinvesting the crown's share of booty in further campaigns, the monarchs granted away uncollected booty to conquerors who could raise finance elsewhere. By the end of the process, ad hoc companies financed the conquests of La Palma and Tenerife, with conquerors and their backers sharing the proceeds.

The islands-as a royal secretary remarked of Grand Canary-might have proved insuperable, but for internal divisions the Spaniards were able to exploit. For the first three years of the conquest of Grand Canary, the Castilians, undermanned and irregularly provisioned, contented themselves with making raids on native villages. Working for wages, and therefore with little incentive to acquire territory, the recruits from urban militia units did not touch the mountain fastnesses on which the Canarians used to fall back for defense. Rather, they concentrated on places in the low plains and hills, where food, not fighting, could be found-the plains where the natives grew their cereals, the hillsides up and down which they shunted their goats. It was a strategy of mere survival, not of victory. Between raids, the invaders remained in their stockade at Las Palmas, where inactivity bred insurrection.

The arrival of Pedro de Vera as military governor in 1480 inaugurated more purposeful strategies. He planned amphibious excursions to the otherwise barely accessible west coast. He erected a new stockade-a second front-in a strategic spot at Agaete in the northwest. His first major victory was the result of a miscalculation by the native leaders, who marched their forces to the plain of Tamaraseite near Las Palmas to offer conventional battle, with disastrous results. If the chronicler who described the battle can be believed, Pedro de Vera slew one of his princ.i.p.al opponents with his own hand, in what sounds suspiciously like a chivalric or Homeric encounter. Toward the end of 1480 or 1481, when the natives broke off the fighting in order to sow their crops, the truce was celebrated with a ma.s.s baptism, to which, presumably, many natives submitted cheerfully without necessarily understanding the significance of the sacrament.

Still, some natives clearly saw the ceremony as marking a new phase in their relations with the Spaniards. A group of chiefs or notables arrived at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella in May 1481. The monarchs contrived a timely display of Christian charity. They bestowed a letter of privilege on the visitors, declaring that they had taken the people of Grand Canary "beneath our protection and royal defense, like the Christians they are," promising them freedom from enslavement and guaranteeing their right to move and trade among Castilian dominions on an equal footing with Castilian-born subjects. From that moment on, "loyalism" and adherence to Christianity increased among the natives.

In coming campaigns, Pedro de Vera was able to play off rival factions. In 1482, the capture and conversion of one of the most important chiefs, known to tradition as Tenesor Semidan but better identified by his baptismal name of Don Fernando Guanarteme, immeasurably strengthened de Vera's hand, as Don Fernando was able to induce many of his compatriots to submit, especially around his power base in the north of the island.

Yet victory still proved elusive. Frustrated by the inaccessibility of the insurgents who held out in the central mountains, beyond perilous goat walks and precipitous defiles, Pedro de Vera turned to a policy of terror and scorched earth. Innocent natives burned to death in reprisal for the loss of Spanish soldiers. Spaniards seized supplies and livestock to deny them to the enemy. Gradually, coerced by these tactics or persuaded by Don Fernando, the natives surrendered. Some abandoned hope and ended their struggle in ritual suicide, flinging themselves from terrible heights.

A remnant continued resistance in justified confidence, for they could still win battles. In the winter of 1483, stalked in a remote ravine, they destroyed a corps of Basque freelances by their usual tactic: precipitating an avalanche to bury the enemy column. De Vera implicitly acknowledged that force could not prevail against them on their chosen terrain. He withdrew to Las Palmas and invited his adversaries to make honorable terms. While a few recalcitrants continued to roam the mountaintops, almost the entire island was at peace by the summer of 1483. La Palma, meanwhile, had an unconquerable reputation, despite the fact that mutually hostile groups of natives divided the island uneasily among themselves. The Spaniards usually called them "bands" and identified twelve of them. The varied topography of the island, sprinkled with microclimates, ensured that there were enough resources to go around, and plenty of terrain that was almost invulnerable to invaders. The natives, whatever their material differences, all practiced the same way of life, mixing goat herding with farming what the Spaniards identified as wheat to make gofio. gofio. Cairns marked their sacred places, where they left offerings of meat and gathered for athletic contests, especially wrestling in the formal, almost balletic style still popular in the Canary Islands. They disposed of the irremediably sick, or those moribund with age, by what we would now call a.s.sisted suicide, laying the victims on a goatskin to await death in a cave mouth, with a flask of milk alongside them, more for comfort than sustenance. Cairns marked their sacred places, where they left offerings of meat and gathered for athletic contests, especially wrestling in the formal, almost balletic style still popular in the Canary Islands. They disposed of the irremediably sick, or those moribund with age, by what we would now call a.s.sisted suicide, laying the victims on a goatskin to await death in a cave mouth, with a flask of milk alongside them, more for comfort than sustenance.

In 1402 the adventurers from Normandy tried to subdue the island and failed. Henry the Navigator launched repeated expeditions. All came to grief. In the midfifteenth century the Peraza family launched the most unremitting effort of all. The natives defeated their armies and killed Guillen Peraza, the young heir on whom were centered the family's hopes for the next generation. The incident inspired a ballad, replete with chivalric imagery that masks the squalid reality of the Perazas' wars:

Weep, ladies, weep, if G.o.d give you grace, For Guillen Peraza, who left in that place The flower, now withered, that bloomed in his face.

Guillen Peraza, child of chance, Where is your s.h.i.+eld and where is your lance?

All is destroyed by Fortune's glance.2

La Palma remained intractable until a woman intervened. There are so many stories of women who are instrumental in conquests that it is tempting to see them all as examples of tradition distorting truth. But Francisca Gazmira's role in the conquest of La Palma has left a trail in the archives as well as a trace in romance. In 1491, when Ferdinand and Isabella were laying siege to Granada, they received news of how the governor and clergy of Grand Canary had selected a pious native slave woman, who had been born in La Palma, to return to the island on an evangelizing mission "to talk to the leaders and chiefs of the communities of the said island, because they had sent a message to say that they wished to become Christians and entrust themselves to Your Highnesses' lords.h.i.+p." 3 3 That an episcopal license should have been conferred on a lay, native, female missionary suggests that Francisca had remarkable charismatic powers, which she seems to have put to good use among her people. She won plenty of her compatriots to the Spaniards' side. She returned from the island with four or five chiefs, who were baptized and clothed in the cathedral of Grand Canary. "And after they became Christians," the local authorities reported, "she returned them to the said island of La Palma so that they could arrange for the members of their communities to become Christians under Your Highnesses' lords.h.i.+p." 4 4 The governor ordered that no one should dare enslave any members of the affected communities, and the ecclesiastical authorities invoked a bull of Pope Eugenius IV, of 1434, to forbid enslavement of natives who wished to become Christians and who kept the terms of the peace treaties Francisca's converts had made. The governor ordered that no one should dare enslave any members of the affected communities, and the ecclesiastical authorities invoked a bull of Pope Eugenius IV, of 1434, to forbid enslavement of natives who wished to become Christians and who kept the terms of the peace treaties Francisca's converts had made.

Francisca's success created an opportunity for invaders to harness the help of native allies and at last exploit native divisions to their own advantage. A would-be conquistador was already struggling to get financial backing for a renewed a.s.sault on the island. Alonso de Lugo had the perfect profile for the job. He had the right experience. He had fought against the Moors before joining the conquest of Grand Canary, where he was instrumental in capturing Don Fernando Guanarteme. He had the right character: unremittingly ruthless, unrestrainedly ambitious, unhesitatingly reckless, indefeasibly tough. He was a calculating entrepreneur who undertook risks for money as well as glory. He had started the first productive sugar mill on Grand Canary and realized that even if slaving opportunities in La Palma were in decline, the climate and soil suited sugar and promised profit. But the Granada war was now at a critical phase. It was a bad time to raise money and men for more-distant adventures.

According to legend, Lugo was idling disconsolately in Seville Cathedral when he got the money for the conquest of La Palma: St. Peter himself appeared in the guise of a mysterious old man and thrust a bagful of doubloons into his grasp. The story represents a feeble attempt to sanctify a morally shabby conquest. Lugo's real backers came from that same group of private financiers in Seville some of whom had already invested in Columbus's enterprise.

Lugo's small, scratch force arrived in the late summer of 1491 on the west coast of the island, to a welcome from the bands Francisca Gazmira had evangelized. If later traditions are reliable, Mayantigo, who was or aspired to be "chief of chiefs" of the island, led the collaborators. The terms of the treaty Lugo made with him suggest a more active alliance than formerly. There was to be "peace and union" between the parties. Mayantigo would acknowledge and obey the Castilian monarchs. He would continue to rule his own band, and would govern on the monarchs' behalf. His people would enjoy all the rights and privileges of the Castilian subjects of the crown. Like so many later Spanish campaigns in the Americas, the war that followed was an internecine struggle, in which natives slaughtered each other, leaving the Spaniards as the beneficiaries of the conflict and the heirs of dead or displaced elites.

Reinforced by the Christian bands, Lugo marched clockwise around the coast, attacking communities who made no effort to unite in resistance. He defeated them piecemeal before withdrawing to winter quarters. The interior of the island was the scene of fiercer defense, for there volcanic activity and erosion have combined to create a vast natural fortress, La Caldera, a cauldronlike crater at the foot of two miles of precipitous, savagely forested slopes. A single people, under a fiercely independent leader whom tradition calls Tanausu, occupied it. Native allies had to carry Lugo on their shoulders to get him over the broken terrain. When the first attack was repulsed, he planned his next a.s.sault by an even more tortuous route-reputedly impossible and therefore unguarded. But Tanausu's skill in skirmish and ambush seemed insuperable.

If our sole surviving source can be trusted, Tanausu might have resisted indefinitely had Lugo not tricked him into attending a sham parley at which the Spaniards overcame him and decimated his followers. The story goes that Lugo sent a native emissary, Juan de La Palma, to offer the same terms of submission that the Christian bands had accepted. Tanausu insisted that he would consider proposals only if Lugo's forces withdrew from his lands. He would then take part in a parley on the frontier. Lugo complied, but his sincerity-if he had any-was riven with suspicion. Tanausu was late for the meeting; so Lugo regarded the agreement as null and void. He set out in arms. When the attackers and defenders met, Tanausu's counselors advised against resumed negotiations, but the leader-in what looks like a literary commonplace rather than an account of real events-rejected their advice. Trusting in Lugo's good faith, he headed into what he thought would be talks but turned out to be a battle. In custody, he could not commit suicide in the spectacular manner of earlier Canarian leaders in defeat. He starved himself to death.5 Here for once the chronicle tradition seems to depart from a heroic version of events. The surviving text dates from the last years of the sixteenth century, when boldly revisionist friars were rewriting the history of the conquest of the Canaries. They wanted to make it match the idealized image of New World peoples crafted in the work of the Dominican moralist Bartolome de Las Casas. Until his death in 1567, this impa.s.sioned critic of empire bombarded the royal court with endless examples of the lobbyists' art, praising the natural virtues of the natives and defending their rights. No doubt the received version of the death of Tanausu is as warped as that of the contemporary chronicles, which reflect a perception saturated in chivalric literature. But cruelty and ruthless daring are thoroughly characteristic of everything that is known for certain about Alonso de Lugo.

Partly, perhaps, because of his early reputation for rapacity, Lugo's operations suffered from shortage of finance and from legal entanglements with his backers. In 1494, he narrowly escaped destruction during his attempted invasion of Tenerife after being lured into a trap near the mouth of the spectacular Orotava Valley. He returned with larger forces in 1495 and recruited to his side many natives who felt alienated by the arrogance of the leader of resistance, the chief of Taoro-Tenerife's richest chieftaincy. A battle on a flat plain near La Laguna favored the Spaniards' cavalry and crossbows, but even after his victory Lugo felt insecure and hunkered down in winter quarters. He sallied forth gingerly in the spring of 1496 to find that a mysterious disease had depleted and debilitated the natives. It was the first of a series of plagues that caused a demographic disaster, comparable, on the island's smaller scale, with those that later devastated the New World. Lugo's triumphal march through what was becoming a wasteland drove the chief of Taoro to ritual suicide in the manner now familiar to Spanish campaigners. Surprisingly, no chronicler recorded the event, but the spot where the chief met his end became a celebrated landmark and appeared over the next few years in many records of land grants. The communities that remained in arms submitted over the next few weeks, and by June 1496, Lugo was able to parade their leaders before the monarchs at court.

It is probably no exaggeration to say that but for the accidents that made the Canaries Castilian, the New World could not have become predominantly Spanish. The wind pattern of the ocean makes the archipelago the ideal staging post on the outward journey, almost directly in the path of the trade winds that carried imperialists on to America. Philip IV, early in the seventeenth century, called the islands "the most important possession I have" because of their strategic location, dominating the Atlantic winds.

The conquest of the Canaries was Spain's education for empire. Here the crucial problems were antic.i.p.ated: vast distances, unfamiliar environments, spectacularly broken terrain, intellectually and morally challenging cultures, hostile peoples whom the Spaniards had to divide to conquer. In the light of these similarities, the apparent contrast with the course of the conflicts that followed in the New World seems incomprehensible. The Canaries were small and spa.r.s.ely populated with defenders whose war technology was rudimentary. Yet it took nearly a century to subdue the archipelago, and each island resisted successive expeditions with surprising tenacity and effectiveness. Yet the tally of American conquests acc.u.mulated with dizzying rapidity. In most of the Caribbean, wherever Spaniards wanted to seize islands, they did so with relative ease and speed, applying more or less directly the lessons of the Canaries. Columbus scythed through native opponents of Spanish colonization of Hispaniola in a few months of campaigning in 1496. Thereafter, resistance was confined to what were in effect guerrilla operations in the bush and the high mountains. The conquest of nearby islands-Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica-followed a similar pattern.

On the mainlands of the Americas, conquistadores faced some densely populated, dazzlingly rich societies, which could put scores of thousands of well-armed men into the field, in environments hostile to the Spaniards, who were far less favorably placed than their counterparts in the Canaries-much farther from home and from hope of reinforcement. Yet almost at a gulp, Spain seemed to gobble up the empires of the Aztecs and the Incas, both of whom looked, at first sight, like insuperable foes. The conventional explanations-that the Spaniards were inherently superior, that they were mistaken for G.o.ds and preceded by omens, that their technology was decisive, that disease undermined defense, and that their enemies were subverted by corroded morale-are all false. But a glance at the Aztec and Inca realms in about 1492 helps explain how so dramatic a debacle was possible.