The _Muladíes_, or Christian converts to Islam, formed another important portion of the Moorish community. At the conquest, as we have seen, large numbers of Christians apostatized, slaves to obtain freedom and freemen to escape taxation. They were looked upon, however, with suspicion by Arabs and Berbers and were subjected to disabilities which led to frequent rebellions and murderous reprisals. On the suppression of a rising in Córdova, in 814, fifteen thousand of them emigrated to Egypt, where they captured Alexandria and held it until 826, when they were forced to capitulate and transferred their arms to Candia, founding a dynasty which lasted for a century and a half. Eight thousand of them established themselves in Fez, where they held their own and even in the fourteenth century were distinguishable from the other Moslems. In Toledo, after several unsuccessful rebellions, the Muladíes became dominant in 853 and remained independent for eighty years. Together with the Mozárabes they almost succeeded in founding a kingdom of their own in the mountains of Ronda, under Omar ben Hafsun, who embraced Christianity. Indeed, the facility of conversion from one faith to another was a marked feature of the period and shows how little firmness of religious conviction existed. The renegade, Ibn Meruan, who founded an independent state in Merida, taught a mixed faith compounded of both the great religions. Everywhere the Muladíes were striving for freedom and establishing petty principalities--in Algarbe, in Priego, in Murcia, and especially in Aragon, where the Gothic family of the Beni-Cassi became supreme. After the reduction of Toledo by starvation, in 930, they become less prominent and gradually merge into the Moslem population.[143] This was assisted by the fact that they made common cause with their conquerors against the fanatic Almoravides and Almohades. The leader of the Andalusians against the latter was a man of Christian descent, Ibn-Mardanich, King of Valencia and Murcia. He wore Christian dress and arms, his language was Castilian and his troops were mostly Castilians, Navarrese and Catalans. To the Christians he was commonly known as the king Don Lope. Religious differences, in fact, were of much less importance than political aims, and everywhere, as we shall see, Christian and Moslem were intermingled in the interminable civil broils of that tumultuous time. In an attempt on Granada, in 1162, the principal captains of Ibn-Mardanich were two sons of the Count of Urgel and a grandson of Alvar Fañez, the favorite lieutenant of the Cid.[144] * * * * * [Sidenote: _THE JEWS UNDER THE SARACENS_]