Ever since the victory of Lucena, the sovereigns had made it a capital point of their policy to foment the dissensions of their enemies. The young king Abdallah, after his humiliating treaty with Ferdinand, lost whatever consideration he had previously possessed. Although the sultana Zoraya, by her personal address and the lavish distribution of the royal treasures, contrived to maintain a faction for her son, the better classes of his countrymen despised him as a renegade and a vassal of the Christian king. As their old monarch had become incompetent, from increasing age and blindness, to the duties of his station in these perilous times, they turned their eyes on his brother Abdallah, surnamed El Zagal, or “the valiant,” who had borne so conspicuous a part in the rout of the Axarquia. The Castilians depict this chief in the darkest colours of ambition and cruelty; but the Moslem writers afford no such intimation, and his advancement to the throne at that crisis seems to be in some measure justified by his eminent talents as a military leader. On his way to Granada he encountered and cut to pieces a body of Calatrava knights from Alhama, and signalised his entrance into his new capital by bearing along the bloody trophies of heads dangling from his saddle-bow, after the barbarous fashion long practised in these wars. It was observed that the old king Abul-Hassan did not long survive his brother’s accession. The young king Abdallah sought the protection of the Castilian sovereigns in Seville, who, true to their policy, sent him back into his own dominions with the means of making headway against his rival. Notwithstanding these auxiliary circumstances, the progress of the Christians was comparatively slow. Every cliff seemed to be crowned with a fortress; and every fortress was defended with the desperation of men willing to bury themselves under its ruins. The old men, women, and children, on occasion of a siege, were frequently despatched to Granada. Such was the resolution, or rather ferocity, of the Moors, that Malaga closed its gates against the fugitives from Alora, after its surrender, and even massacred some of them in cold blood. The eagle eye of El Zagal seemed to take in at a glance the whole extent of his little territory, and to detect every vulnerable point in his antagonist, whom he encountered where he least expected it, cutting off his convoys, surprising his foraging parties, and retaliating by a devastating inroad on the borders.