University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.
Events at Granada, and rise of the Moorish King
Boabdil el Chico.

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 favored
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 favorite queen of Aben Hassan was
named Fatima, to which the Moors added the appellation
of La Zoraya, or the light of 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.[1] The king, who was well stricken in years
at the time, became enamored 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. Zoraya 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 Zoraya, 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 Cimares, one of the principal towers
of the Alhambra. As Boabdil increased in years,
Zoraya 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 im

piously 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 apprized 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 Cimares.[2] 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 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 Alixares, 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. “Allah 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—Allah forefend 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 scimitar. 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 Cimixer, 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 favor 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.