But a rival was not slow to appear. Mohammed Al Ahmar, the Fair or the Ruddy, defeated, dethroned, and slew Al Mutawakal, and reigned in his stead in Andalusia. Despoiled in his turn of most of his possessions by St. Ferdinand of Castile, Al Ahmar was fain at length to content himself with the rich districts in the extreme south of the Peninsula, which are known to fame, wherever the Spanish or the English language is spoken, as the Kingdom of Granada. And thus it came to pass that the city on the banks of the Darro, the home of the proud and highly cultivated Syrians of Damascus, the flower of the early Arab invaders of Spain, became also the abiding place of the later Arab civilization, overmastered year after year, and destroyed, by the Christian armies ever pressing on to the southern sea. Yet, in the middle of the thirteenth century, the flood tide of reconquest had for the moment fairly spent itself. The Christians were not strong enough to conquer, and above all they were not numerous enough to occupy, the districts that were still peopled by the Moor; and for once a wise and highly cultivated Christian shared the supreme power in the Peninsula with a generous and honorable Moslem. Alfonso X. sought not to extend his frontiers, but to educate his people, not to slaughter his neighbors, but to give laws to his subjects, not to plunder frontier cities, but to make Castile into a kingdom, with a history, a civilization, and a language of her own. If the reputation of Alfonso is by no means commensurate with his true greatness, the statesmanship of Mohammed Al Ahmar, the founder of the ever famous Kingdom of Granada, is overshadowed by his undying fame as an architect. Yet is Al Ahmar worthy of remembrance as a king and the parent of kings in Spain. The loyal friend and ally of his Christian neighbor, the prudent administrator of his own dominions, he collected at his Arab court a great part of the wealth, the science, and the intelligence of Spain. His empire has long ago been broken up; the Moslem has been driven out; there is no king nor kingdom of Granada. But their memory lives in the great palace fortress whose red towers still rise over the sparkling Darro, and whose fairy chambers are still to be seen in what is, perhaps, the most celebrated of the wonder works of the master builders of the world. After his long and glorious reign of forty-two years, Mohammed the Fair was killed by a fall from his horse near Granada, and was succeeded by his son, Mohammed II., in the last days of the year 1272. Al Ahmar had ever remained at peace with Alfonso X., but his son, taking advantage of the king’s absence in quest of an empire in Germany, sought the assistance of Yusuf, the sovereign or emperor of Morocco, and invaded the Christian frontiers.