University of Virginia Library

BOABDIL EL CHICO.

My conversation with the Moor in the Court of
Lions, set me to musing on the singular fate of Boabdil.
Never was surname more applicable than
that bestowed upon him by his subjects, of “El
Zogoybi,” or, “the unlucky.” His misfortunes
began almost in his cradle. In his tender youth
he was imprisoned and menaced with death by
an inhuman father, and only escaped through a
mother's stratagem; in after years his life was imbittered
and repeatedly endangered by the hostilities
of a usurping uncle; his reign was distracted
by external invasions and internal feuds; he was
alternately the foe, the prisoner, the friend, and
always the dupe of Ferdinand, until conquered and
dethroned by the mingled craft and force of that
perfidious monarch. An exile from his native
land, he took refuge with one of the princes of

Africa, and fell obscurely in battle fighting in the
cause of a stranger. His misfortunes ceased not
with his death. If Boabdil cherished a desire to
leave an honourable name on the historic page,
how cruelly has he been defrauded of his hopes!
Who is there that has turned the least attention
to the romantic history of the Moorish domination
in Spain, without kindling with indignation at the
alleged atrocities of Boabdil? Who has not been
touched with the woes of his lovely and gentle
queen, subjected by him to a trial of life and death,
on a false charge of infidelity. Who has not been
shocked by the alleged murder of his sister and her
two children, in a transport of passion. Who has
not felt his blood boil at the inhuman massacre of
the gallant Abencerrages, thirty-six of whom, it is
affirmed, he caused to be beheaded in the Court of
the Lions? All these charges have been reiterated
in various forms; they have passed into ballads,
dramas and romances, until they have taken too
thorough possession of the public mind to be eradicated.

There is not a foreigner of education that visits
the Alhambra, but asks for the fountain where
the Abencerrages were beheaded; and gazes with
horror at the grated gallery where the queen is
said to have been confined; not a peasant of the

Vega or the Sierra, but sings the story in rude
couplets to the accompaniment of his guitar,
while his hearers learn to execrate the very name
of Boabdil.

Never, however, was name more foully and unjustly
slandered. I have examined all the authentic
chronicles and letters written by Spanish
authors contemporary with Boabdil; some of whom
were in the confidence of the catholic sovereigns,
and actually present in the camp throughout the
war; I have examined all the Arabian authorities
I could get access to through the medium of translation,
and can find nothing to justify these dark
and hateful accusations.

The whole of these tales may be traced to a
work commonly called “The Civil Wars of Granada,”
containing a pretended history of the feuds
of the Zegries and Abencerrages during the last
struggle of the Moorish empire. This work appeared
originally in Spanish, and professed to be
translated from the Arabic by one Gines Perez de
Hita, an inhabitant of Murcia. It has since passed
into various languages, and Florian has taken from
it much of the fable of his Gonsalvo of Cordova.
It has in a great measure, usurped the authority
of real history, and is currently believed by the
people, and especially the peasantry of Granada.

The whole of it, however, is a mass of fiction,
mingled with a few disfigured truths, which give
it an air of veracity. It bears internal evidence
of its falsity, the manners and customs of the Moors,
being extravagantly misrepresented in it, and
scenes depicted, totally incompatible with their
habits and their faith, and which never could have
been recorded by a Mahometan writer.

I confess there seems to me something almost
criminal in the wilful perversions of this work.
Great latitude is undoubtedly to be allowed to romantic
fiction, but there are limits which it must
not pass, and the names of the distinguished dead,
which belong to history, are no more to be calumniated
than those of the illustrious living. One
would have thought too, that the unfortunate Boabdil
had suffered enough for his justifiable hostility
to Spaniards, by being stripped of his kingdom,
without having his name thus wantonly traduced
and rendered a bye-word and a theme of infamy
in his native land, and in the very mansion of his
fathers!

It is not intended hereby to affirm that the
transactions imputed to Boabdil, are totally without
historic foundation, but as far as they can be traced,
they appear to have been the arts of his father,
Abul Hassan, who is represented by both Christian

and Arabian chroniclers, as being of a cruel and ferocious
nature. It was he who put to death the
cavaliers of the illustrious line of the Abencerrages,
upon suspicion of their being engaged in a conspiracy
to dispossess him of his throne.

The story of the accusation of the queen of Boabdil,
and of her confinement in one of the towers,
may also be traced to an incident in the life of his
tiger-hearted father. Abul Hassan, in his advanced
age, married a beautiful Christian captive of noble
descent, who took the Moorish appellation of
Zorayda, by whom he had two sons. She was of
an ambitious spirit, and anxious that her children
should succeed to the crown. For this purpose
she worked upon the suspicious temper of the king;
inflaming him with jealousies of his children by his
other wives and concubines, whom she accused of
plotting against his throne and life. Some of them
were slain by the ferocious father. Ayxa la Horra,
the virtuous mother of Boabdil, who had once been
his cherished favourite, became likewise, the object
of his suspicion. He confined her and her
son in the tower of Comares, and would have sacrificed
Boabdil to his fury, but that his tender mother
lowered him from the tower, in the night, by
means of the scarfs of herself and her attendants,
and thus enabled him to escape to Guadix.

Such is the only shadow of a foundation that I
can find for the story of the accused and captive
queen; and in this it appears that Boabdil was the
persecuted instead of the persecutor.

Throughout the whole of his brief, turbulent
and disastrous reign, Boabdil gives evidences of a
mild and amiable character. He in the first instance,
won the hearts of the people by his affable
and gracious manners; he was always peaceable,
and never inflicted any severity of punishment
upon those who occasionally rebelled against him.
He was personally brave, but he wanted moral
courage, and in times of difficulty and perplexity,
was wavering and irresolute. This feebleness of
spirit hastened his downfal, while it deprived him
of that heroic grace which would have given a
grandeur and dignity to his fate, and rendered
him worthy of closing the splendid drama of the
Moslem domination in Spain.