The loss of Alfonso VI. of Castile was compensated by the rise of another Alfonso, King of Aragon, surnamed from his fighting proclivities El Batallador. Under the guidance of his genius, the Christians began again to successfully arrest the progress of Moslem conquest. The line of fortresses along the frontier gradually fell into their hands. The great cities of Lerida and Saragossa were taken. In many fiercely contested engagements, the furious assaults of the Moslems were repulsed by the cool and determined courage of their adversaries. On the bloody field of Cutanda, in an effectual attempt to save the city of Calatayud, the Emir of Valencia left twenty thousand of his bravest soldiers. The tide once turned, the misfortunes of the Moslems followed each other in quick succession. The strongholds of the North were absorbed by the increasing power of the kingdom of Aragon. Portugal and much of the valley of the Douro, which had submitted to Yusuf, were again incorporated into the states of Castile. The decadent condition of his empire in the Peninsula provoked another raid from Ali, at the head of a great African army, with even less decisive results than had attended the former one. The incapacity of the sovereign, in his far-distant capital, to protect his subjects from the oppression of their governors, as well as to defend his frontiers from the encroachments of the enemy, became daily more apparent. The influence of the theologians, as might have been anticipated from the peculiar disposition of Ali, was paramount. The faquis and kadis were the true source of power, the dispensers of favor, the pitiless instruments of oppression and vengeance. They stood at the ear of every provincial magistrate and military commander,--officials whose ignorance exaggerated the knowledge of their unprincipled advisers,--and reaped the profits of spoliation and cruelty, while their dupes bore the odium of their flagrant and shameless injustice. Their intolerance arrayed them against all learning, even to the point of decrying the most accomplished scholars of their own, the Malikite, sect. No philosopher dared to openly entertain an heretical opinion. Poets, formerly accustomed to affluence, wandered about clothed in rags, and were constantly on the verge of starvation. The clerical and judicial harpies who controlled the administration secured the employment of Jews as farmers of the revenue, and divided with these inexorable collectors the fruits of their rapacity and extortion. In consequence of their rare opportunities, they soon became the richest class in Andalusia. Ibn-Hamden, the Kadi of Cordova, surpassed all of his brethren in wealth, his fortune being estimated at several million pieces of gold. Encouraged by their example and success, the Berber officers and soldiers robbed and persecuted the people, already driven to despair by the exactions of corrupt functionaries acting under the perverted authority of the law. They seized their property.