He had a small business, and at the same time pursued Talmudic and linguistic studies. Besides Hebrew, Arabic and Chaldee, he understood four languages, including Latin, Castilian and the Berber tongue. Unlike most other Jews, who wrote Arabic in Hebrew characters, Ibn-Nagrela was a master of Arabic calligraphy, an art highly esteemed among the Arabs. To his knowledge of languages and calligraphy he owed the high position which he held, and which had not been attained by any Jew since the destruction of the Jewish state. Civil wars and the ambition of the Emirs had broken up the empire of the Ommiyyade Caliphs into small principalities. Andalusia, after the fall of the last Ommiyyades, was subdivided like Germany and Italy of the past. The Arab historians call the regents of this period the "Kings of Anarchy." One race of Berbers, the Sinhajas, founded a kingdom of their own in the south of Spain, under a leader named Maksen (1020). Granada, largely populated by Jews, became the capital of this kingdom, and Malaga was also a part of it. In Malaga, Abulkasim Ibn-Alarif, the vizir of Habus, the second king of Granada, had a palace next to Samuel's little shop. This brought good fortune to the poor scholar, and raised him above want, and ultimately exalted him to a height worthy of his greatness. A slave of the vizir who frequently furnished information to her master, regularly had her letters written by the poor Jew. These letters displayed so much linguistic and calligraphic skill that the vizir Ibn-Alarif became anxious to know the writer. He had Ibn-Nagrela called into his presence, and took him into his service as his private secretary (1025). The vizir soon discovered that Samuel possessed great political insight, and consulted him on all important affairs of state, and as his advice was always sound, the vizir at length undertook nothing without Samuel's approval.