Spain and Her Colonies, Compiled from the Best Authorities
History
Spain and Her Colonies, Compiled from the Best Authorities
Spain -- History
as by a miracle, and the survivors straggled into Loja and Antequera and
Malaga, leaving Abul Hassan and his brother Al Zagal, or the Valiant,
with all the honors of war.
But the successes of the Moor in the field were more than
counterbalanced by treason in the palace. By Zoraya, a lady of Christian
ancestry, Muley Abul Hassan had a son, Abu Abdallah, who has earned a
sad notoriety under the more familiar name of Boabdil. Jealous of some
rival, or ambitious of greater power, the Sultana and her son intrigued
against their sovereign, and having escaped from the State prison, in
which they were at first prudently confined, raised the standard of
revolt, and compelled Abul Hassan, who was thenceforth more usually
spoken of as the Old King, to seek refuge on the sea-coast at Malaga.
Boabdil, jealous of the success of his father and his undo at Loja and
in the Axarquia, and anxious to confirm his power by some striking
victory over the Christians, took the field and confronted the forces of
the Count of Cabra, near Lucena. The battle was hotly contested, but
victory remained with the Christians. Ali Atar, the bravest of the
Moorish generals, was slain by the hand of Alfonso de Aguilar, and
Boabdil himself was taken prisoner by a common soldier, Hurtado by name,
and fell into the hands of the victorious Count of Cabra.
The captivity of Boabdil, the Little King, el Rey Chico, as he was
called by the Castilians, was the turning point in the history of the
Moorish dominion in Spain. Released on payment of a magnificent ransom
provided by his mother Zoraya, and bound to his Christian captors by a
humiliating treaty, he returned to Granada, disgraced and dishonored, as
the ally of the enemies of his country. Driven out of the capital by the
forces of his father, who had returned to occupy the great
palace-fortress of Alhambra, Boabdil and his mother retired to Almeria,
the second city in the kingdom; and the whole country was distracted by
civil war.
Yet for four years the Castilians refrained from any important
expedition against Granada. Their tactics were rather those of Scipio at
Numantia. For Delay was all in favor of Disintegration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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