University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER IX.

The Moorish king Aben Hassan returned,
baffled and disappointed, from
before the walls of Alhama, and was
received with groans and smothered execrations
by the people of Granada. The
prediction of the santon was in every
mouth, and appeared to be rapidly fulfilling;
for the enemy was already strongly
fortified in Alhama, in the very heart of
the kingdom. The disaffection, which
broke out in murmurs among the common
people, fermented more secretly and
dangerously among the nobles. Muley
Aben Hassan was of a fierce and cruel
nature; his reign had been marked with
tyranny and bloodshed, and many chiefs
of the family of the Abencerrages, the
noblest lineage among the Moors, had
fallen victims to his policy or vengeance.
A deep plot was now formed to put an
end to his oppressions, and dispossess
him of the throne. The situation of the
royal household favoured the conspiracy.

Muley Aben Hassan, though cruel, was
uxorious; that is to say, he had many
wives, and was prone to be managed
by them by turns. He had two queens,
in particular, whom he had chosen from
affection. One, named Ayxa, was a
Moorish female; she was likewise termed
in Arabic La Horra, or "the chaste,"
from the spotless purity of her character.

While yet in the prime of her beauty,
she bore a son to Aben Hassan, the expected
heir to his throne. The name of
this prince was Mahomet Abdalla, or, as
he has more generally been termed
among historians, Boabdil. At his birth
the astrologers, according to custom,
cast his horoscope: they were seized with
fear and trembling when they beheld the
fatal portents revealed to their science.
"Alla achbar! God is great!" exclaimed
they: "he alone controls the fate of empires:
it is written in the heavens, that
this prince shall sit upon the throne of
Granada, but that the downfall of the
kingdom shall be accomplished during
his reign." From this time the prince
was ever regarded with aversion by his
father, and the series of persecutions
which he suffered, and the dark prediction
which hung over him from his infancy,
procured him the surname of El
Zogoybi, or "the unfortunate." He is
more commonly known by the appellation
of El Chico, "the younger," to distinguish
him from an usurping uncle.

The other favourite queen of Aben
Hassan was named Fatima, to which
the Moors added the appellation of La
Zoroya, or "the light of the dawn,"
from her effulgent beauty. She was a
Christian by birth, the daughter of the
commander Sancho Ximenes de Solis,
and had been taken captive in her tender
youth.[20]

The king, who was well stricken in
years at the time, became enamoured of
the blooming Christian maid. He made
her his sultana; and, like most old men
who marry in their dotage, resigned
himself to her management. Zoroya
became the mother of two princes; and
her anxiety for their advancement seemed
to extinguish every other natural
feeling in her breast. She was as ambitious
as she was beautiful, and her ruling
desire became, to see one of her sons
seated upon the throne of Granada.

For this purpose she made use of all
her arts, and of the complete ascendancy
she had over the mind of her cruel husband,
to undermine his other children in
his affections, and to fill him with jealousies
of their designs. Muley Aben
Hassan was so wrought upon by her
machinations, that he publicly put several
of his sons to death at the celebrated
fountain of lions, in the court of the
Alhambra; a place signalized in Moorish
history as the scene of many sanguinary
deeds.

The next measure of Zoroya was
against her rival sultana, the virtuous
Ayxa. She was past the bloom of her
beauty, and had ceased to be attractive
in the eyes of her husband. He was
easily persuaded to repudiate her, and to
confine her and her son in the tower of
Comares, one of the principal towers of
the Alhambra. As Boabdil increased in
years, Zoroya beheld in him a formidable
obstacle to the pretensions of her
sons; for he was universally considered
heir-apparent to the throne. The jealousies,
suspicions, and alarms of his
tiger-hearted father were again excited;
he was reminded, too, of the prediction,
that fixed the ruin of the kingdom during
the reign of this prince. Muley Aben
Hassan impiously set the stars at defiance.
"The sword of the executioner," said he,
"shall prove the falsehood of these lying
horoscopes, and shall silence the ambition
of Boabdil, as it has the presumption of
his brothers."

The sultana Ayxa was secretly apprised
of the cruel design of the old
monarch. She was a woman of talents
and courage, and by means of her female
attendants concerted a plan for the escape
of her son. A faithful servant was instructed
to wait below the Alhambra, in
the dead of the night, on the banks of
the river Darro, with a fleet Arabian
courser. The sultana, when the castle
was in a state of deep repose, tied
together the shawls and scarfs of herself
and her female attendants, and lowered
the youthful prince from the tower of
Comares.[21] He made his way in safety
down the steep rocky hill to the banks of
the Darro, and, throwing himself on the
Arabian courser, was thus spirited off to
the city of Guadix in the Alpuxarres.
Here he lay for some time concealed,
until, gaining adherents, he fortified himself
in the place, and set the machinations
of his tyrant father at defiance. Such

was the state of affairs in the royal household
of Granada, when Muley Aben Hassan
returned foiled from his expedition
against Alhama. The faction which had
been secretly formed among the nobles,
determined to depose the old king Aben
Hassan, and to elevate his son Boabdil
to the throne. They concerted their
measures with the latter, and an opportunity
soon presented to put them in
practice. Muley Aben Hassan had a
royal country palace, called Alexares, in
the vicinity of Granada, to which he
resorted occasionally, to recreate his
mind during this time of perplexity. He
had been passing one day among its
bowers, when, on returning to the capital,
he found the gates closed against
him, and his son Mohammed Abdalla,
otherwise called Boabdil, proclaimed
king. "Alla achbar! God is great!"
exclaimed old Muley Aben Hassan: "it
is in vain to contend against what is
written in the book of fate. It was predestined
that my son should sit upon the
throne. Alla forfend the rest of the prediction!"
The old monarch knew the
inflammable nature of the Moors, and
that it was useless to attempt to check
any sudden blaze of popular passion.
"A little while," said he, "and this
rash flame will burn itself out; and the
people, when cool, will listen to reason."
So he turned his steed from the gate, and
repaired to the city of Baza, where he
was received with great demonstrations
of loyalty. He was not a man to give
up his throne without a struggle. A
large part of the kingdom still remained
faithful to him; he trusted that the conspiracy
in the capital was but transient
and partial, and that by suddenly making
his appearance in its streets, at the head
of a moderate force, he should awe the
people again into allegiance. He took
his measures with that combination of
dexterity and daring which formed his
character, and arrived one night under
the walls of Granada with five hundred
chosen followers. Scaling the walls of
the Alhambra, he threw himself, with
sanguinary fury, into its silent courts.
The sleeping inmates were roused from
their repose only to fall by the exterminating
cimeter. The rage of Aben Hassan
spared neither age, nor rank, nor
sex; the halls resounded with shrieks
and yells, and the fountains ran red with
blood. The alcayde, Aben Comixer,
retreated to a strong tower, with a few
of the garrison and inhabitants. The
furious Aben Hassan did not lose time
in pursuing him: he was anxious to
secure the city, and to wreak his vengeance
on its rebellious inhabitants.
Descending with his bloody band into
the streets, he cut down the defenceless
inhabitants, as, startled from their sleep,
they rushed forth, to learn the cause of
the alarm. The city was soon completely
roused; the people flew to arms;
lights blazed in every street, revealing
the scanty numbers of this band that
had been dealing such fatal vengeance
in the dark. Muley Aben Hassan had
been mistaken in his conjectures. The
great mass of the people, incensed by
his tyranny, were zealous in favour of
his son. A violent but transient conflict
took place in the streets and squares;
many of the followers of Aben Hassan
were slain, the rest driven out of the city,
and the old monarch, with the remnant
of his band, retreated to his loyal city of
Malaga.

Such was the commencement of those
great internal feuds and divisions, which
hastened the downfall of Granada. The
Moors became separated into two hostile
factions, headed by the father and the
son, and several bloody encounters took
place between them; yet they never
failed to act with all their separate force
against the Christians, as a common
enemy, whenever an opportunity occurred.