THE UMA YYAD REGIME 185maintammg their authority over their own subjects, as this deter-
mined much of their relations with the powers beyond their frontiers.
The problems of imposition and maintenance of their rule on local
communities were essentially very similar to those encountered by
the Visigothic kings in the sixth century. Certain basic factors, such
as the difficulties created by the geography of the peninsula for the
maintenance of communications, remained the same. The Arab rulers
had, however, increased the natural disadvantages by their choice of
site for their capital, and by the limitations of their style of govern-
ment. The Umayyads could not have the same kind of relationship
with the provincial qadis that the Visigothic kings had had with their
bishops, nor were the amirs willing to make their presence felt in
person in the way that their predecessors had. Their style of rule was
more like that of the contemporary Byzantine emperors or the
'Abbasid caliphs, centring upon the palace. Although this had enor-
mously beneficial consequences for the city of Cordoba, it set up
unnecessary tensions between capital and provinces. As has been
mentioned, the maintenance of tribal organisation, together with the
limitations of the central bureaucracy, meant that authority in the
ruler's name had to be entrusted to those who already had local
power, as this was the only way in which it could be enforced.
Such a system could work, as for example in the Byzantine Empire,
where there was a large measure of cultural cohesion, reinforced by
the threat of aggression by external and alien powers. In Spain the
opposite was the case: the racial and religious unity that had largely
been achieved by the Visigoths was now replaced by diversity and
diffusion. New racial elements, the Arabs and the Berbers, were intro-
duced, who were not even in harmony amongst themselves. A new
religion came in with the conquerors that furthered this disunity, not
least by creating a class of indigenous converts who failed to be prop-
erly integrated with the Arab Muslims.
Taking the peninsula as a whole, such a mixture of diverse, and
often antagonistic, racial, religious and cultural elements should have
been disastrous. At the level of local communities the introduction,
often in successive waves, of such widely varied types of citizen cre-
ated friction and sometimes violent conflict. In addition, the power
of government had to be devolved to those whose authority really
stemmed from the strength of their own personal following, and who
could easily disregard or defy the will of their overlord in Cordoba as
well as take a partisan interest in local conflicts.