About four years after the death of Joseph, the Spaniards renewed their inroads into Grenada, and carried fire and sword to the very gates of the capital. All the neighbouring fields were devastated; the crops were burned and the {179} villages destroyed. John II., who then reigned in Castile, wishing to add to the miseries he had already occasioned these unhappy people the still greater misfortune of civil war, instigated the proclamation at Grenada of a certain Joseph Alliamar, a grandson of that Mohammed the Red so basely assassinated at Seville by Peter the Cruel. All the discontented spirits in the kingdom joined the faction of Joseph Alhamar; and the Zegris, a powerful tribe, who were at enmity with the Abencerrages, lent their aid to the usurper. Mohammed Abenazar was again driven from the capital, A.D. 1432, Heg. 836, and Joseph IV. Alhamar possessed his dominions six months. At the termination of that time he expired. Mohammed the Left-handed once more resumed his royal seat; but, after thirteen years of misfortune, this unhappy prince was again deposed for the third time, and imprisoned by one of his nephews, named Mohammed XII. the Osmin, who was himself afterward dethroned[17] by his own brother Ismael, and ended his days {180} in the same dungeon in which his uncle Mohammed Abenazar had languished. All these revolutions did not prevent the Christian and Moorish governors who commanded on their respective frontiers from making incessant irruptions into the enemy's country. Sometimes a little troop of cavalry or infantry surprised a village, massacred the inhabitants, pillaged their houses, and carried away their flocks. Sometimes an army suddenly appeared in a fertile plain, devastated the fields, uprooted the vines, felled the trees, besieged and took some town or fortress, and retired with their booty. This kind of warfare was ruinous, most of all, to the unfortunate cultivator of the soil. The Grenadian dominions suffered so much during the reign of Ismael II., that the king was compelled to cause immense forests to be cleared for the support of his capital, which then drew scarcely any supplies from the vast and fertile _vega_ which had been so often desolated by the Spaniards. Ismael II. left the crown to his son Mulei-Hassem, a young and highly courageous prince, who, profiting by the disastrous condition of Castile under the deplorable reign of Henry IV. the {181} Impotent, carried his arms into the centre of Andalusia. The success that marked the commencement of the reign of this sovereign, together with his talents and warlike ardour, tempted the Moors to believe that they might yet recover their former greatness. But the occurrence at this juncture of a great and unlooked-for event, arrested the victorious progress of Mulei-Hassam, and prepared the way for the total ruin of his kingdom.