A similar notice is contained in the _Chronicle of Rassis the Moor_. Referring to the end of the tenth century, this author wrote that "Almería is the key of profit and of all prosperity. Within her walls dwell cunning weavers who produce in quantities magnificent silken cloths inwoven with gold thread." Other important centres of this trade and craft were Málaga, Baeza, Alicante, Seville, and Granada. Rassis wrote of Málaga: "She has a fertile territory, wherein is made the finest _sirgo_ in the world. From here they trade in it with every part of Spain. Here too is made the finest of all linens, and that which the women best esteem." Of Baeza he wrote: "She manufactures excellent and famous silken cloths of the kind which are called _tapetes_"; and of Alicante, "This city lies in the Sierra de Benalcatil, which in its turn is situated in the midst of other ranges containing prosperous towns where silken cloths of finest quality were made in other days; and the weavers of these cloths were skilled exceedingly." Málaga is described by the Cordovese historian Ash Shakandi (thirteenth century) as "famous for its manufactures of silks of every colour and design, some of them so costly that a suit is sold for thousands; such are the brocades of beautiful pattern, inwoven with the names of caliphs, emirs and other wealthy personages.... As at Málaga and Almería, there are at Murcia several manufactories of silken cloth called _al washiu thalathat_, or 'the variegated.' This town is also celebrated for the carpets called _tantili_, which are exported to all countries of the east and west, as well as for a sort of bright-coloured mat with which the Murcians cover the walls of their houses." The ancient Illiberia or Illiberis, believed to have been situated not far from where is nowadays Granada, is described in Rassis' chronicle as "a city great and flourishing by reason of the quantity of silk that she exports to every part of Spain. She lies at sixty thousand paces distance from, and on the southward side of Cordova, and six thousand paces from, and to the north of the Frozen Sierra" (_i.e._ the Sierra Nevada). Another chronicle--that of El Nubiense, who visited Spain towards the twelfth century--states that in the kingdom of Jaen alone were six hundred towns which produced and carried on a trade in silk.