And now, emerged from the mountain fastnesses whither they had fled before this southern swarm of turbaned Infidels, the sturdy Christians press heavily on their foe. Inch by inch, each step counting a century, they fight their way from the Pyrenees back to Granada. Assuming the title of caliph, Abdurrahman III. defeats the Christians at Zamora on the Douro, but is in turn repulsed, in 938, at Simancas. In vain the Mahometans call to their aid the Almoravides of Morocco; their race upon the Peninsula is run. As portions of the country are wrested from them, lands are awarded to notable Christian leaders, who at intervals pause in their holy crusade, and fall to warring on each other; and by these intestine brawls more Christian blood is spilt than by all the cimiters of the Saracens. At such times the Infidels might turn and make the Christians an easy prey; but centuries of opulence, and, except along their northern border, of inaction, have sapped their strength and left them nerveless. It is the old story alike of peoples, sects, and individuals; discipline, begotten by necessity, engenders strength, which fattened by luxury swells to weakness. The beginning of the eleventh century finds the Christians occupying about half the Peninsula, that is to say the kingdoms of Leon, Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and Portugal. Leon was but another name for the kingdom of Oviedo, or Asturias, the birthplace of Spanish nationality. Castile—Roman, _castella_; Arabic, _ardo-l-koláa_, land of castles, so called from the _castillos_, or forts, built there—though destined eventually to absorb all the kingdoms of the Peninsula, was at first a republic, consisting of a few small towns or fortified castles, which had united for mutual protection from both Mahometans and contentious Christian brethren. In 1037 Leon was united by Ferdinand I., called the Great, to Castile; and from its central position, and the strength arising from perpetual vigilance, the new kingdom gradually widened and added to its dominions, until eventually all the kingdoms of the Peninsula were united under the banner of Castile. Navarre belonged to a French count, whose successor drove the Saracens from the territory adjacent on the south-west, and founded the kingdom of Aragon.