The downfall of that brilliant dynasty, which had concentrated everything at Cordova, was favorable to the general literature of Morisco Spain. “After the breaking of the necklace and the scattering of its pearls,” says Ash-Shakandi, “the kings of small states divided among themselves the patrimony of the Beni Ommiah.” They vied with each other in filling their capitals with poets and learned men, and rewarded them with boundless prodigality. Such were the Moorish kings of Seville of the illustrious line of the Beni Abbad, “with whom,” says the same writer, “resided fruit and palm-trees and pomegranates; who became the centre of eloquence in prose and verse; every day of whose reign was a solemn festivity; whose history abounds in generous actions and heroic deeds, that will last through surrounding ages and live forever in the memory of man!” No place, however, profited more in point of civilization and refinement by the downfall of the Western Caliphat than Granada. It succeeded to Cordova in splendor, while it surpassed it in romantic beauty of situation. The amenity of its climate, where the ardent heats of a southern summer were tempered by breezes from snow-clad mountains; the voluptuous repose of its valleys and the bosky luxuriance of its groves and gardens all awakened sensations of delight, and disposed the mind to love and poetry. Hence the great number of amatory poets that flourished in Granada. Hence those amorous canticles breathing of love and war, and wreathing chivalrous grace round the stern exercise of arms. Those ballads which still form the pride and delight of Spanish literature are but the echoes of amatory and chivalric lays, which once delighted the Moslem courts of Andalus; and in which a modern historian of Granada pretends to find the origin of the _rima Castellana_ and the type of the “gay science” of the troubadours.[20] Poetry was cultivated in Granada by both sexes. “Had Allah,” says Ash-Shakandi, “bestowed no other boon on Granada than that of making it the birthplace of so many poetesses, that alone would be sufficient for its glory.” Among the most famous of these was Hafsah; renowned, says the old chronicler, for beauty, talents, nobility, and wealth. We have a mere relic of her poetry in some verses, addressed to her lover, Ahmed, recalling an evening passed together in the garden of Maumal. “Allah has given us a happy night, such as he never vouchsafes to the wicked and the ignoble. We have beheld the cypresses of Maumal gently bowing their heads before the mountain breeze,--the sweet perfumed breeze that smelt of gillyflowers; the dove murmured her love among the trees; the sweet basil inclined its boughs to the limpid brook.”