W. C a r e w H a z l i t t Coinage of the European Continent

Introduction 2 5
of France from the commencement of the fifth to
portion
that of the eighth century. Italy, France, and the Peninsula
were in fact colonised by Northmen Vandals, Huns, Goths
just as England received in turn settlers from the same
part of Europe, variously designated Danes and Saxons.
But in the case of Spain the Gothic influence and rule were
supplanted at a very early date by a circumstance which
completely changed and permanently affected the fortune of
the country. In the opening years of the eighth century it
became the object of a Mohammedan invasion, and down to
the close of the fifteenth it remained the seat of what is
known as the Moorish power. This new element in the
religious and political constitution, which from the long
anterior migration of the Goths or Vandals of Spain to
Morocco was probably of a very mixed character, limited
its domination to Cordova and Granada, and side by side
with it -in
Arragon, in Navarre, in Asturias or Oviedo,
Leon and Castile, and even in Galicia and elsewhere
separate governments rose and flourished and after
; many
changes the whole was only eventually united under Ferdinand
and Isabella in the beginning of the fifteenth century.
These successive changes and fusions unavoidably involved
a correspondingly complex and voluminous numismatic
chronicle, of which, in a general manual, an outline,
drawing attention to features and points of particular interest
to the student or the collector, is all that is readily feasible.
IX
It is
probable that very few specimens of the extremely
debased form of the Merovingian type, known as the Visigothic,
and remarkable only as existing both in gold and
silver, and of the currency of the Moorish emirs and kings
of Granada, will satisfy the taste or enthusiasm of the
majority. The two constitute a large body of coins, of
course totally distinct from each other, and are in many
instances of the utmost rarity. They are interesting, how-