The Cid then went to the support of Alkaadir, king of Valencia. He defeated the threatening Almoravides flushed with their victory over the Castilians at Zalaca. Again he chastised Berenguer of Barcelona. he hastened to answer a second summons from Alphonso, this time to bear aid in operations in the region about Granada. Suspecting that Alphonso intended treachery, he with drew from the camp toward Valencia. With Zaragoza as his base he laid waste the lands of Sancho and avenged himself upon Alphonso by ravaging Calahorra and Nájera. Finally in 1092 the overthrow of Alkaadir prompted him to interfere definitely in the affairs of Valencia. He besieged the city closely and captured it in 1094. There he ruled, independent, until his death in 1099. Even the Moorish chroniclers of the twelfth century pay their tribute to the memory of the Cid by the virulence of their hatred. Aben Bassam wrote: "The might of this tyrant was ever growing until its weight was felt upon the highest peaks and in the deepest valleys, and filled with terror both noble and commoner. I have heard men say that when his eagerness was greatest and his ambition highest he uttered these words, 'If one Rodrigo brought ruin upon this Peninsula, another Rodrigo shall reconquer it!' A saying that filled the hearts of the believers with fear and caused them to think that what they anxiously dreaded would speedily come to pass. This man, who was the lash and scourge of his time, was, because of his love of glory, his steadfastness of character and his heroic valor, one of the miracles of the Lord. Victory ever followed Rodrigo's banner--may Allay curse him--he triumphed over the princes of the unbelievers . . . and with a handful of men confounded and dispersed their numerous armies.' [2] One can hardly look for strict neutrality in the verdicts of Moorish historians, but between the one extreme of fanaticism that led Aben Bassam elsewhere to call the Cid a robber and a Galician dog and the other that four centuries later urged his canonization, the true believer can readily discern the figure of a warrior who was neither saint nor bandit. [2] Aben Bassam, Tesoro (1109), cf. Dozy, Recherches sur l'histoire politique et littéraire d'Espagne pendant le Moyen Age. Leyden, 1849.