With such soldiers as the Cid, and such kings as Fernando and Alfonso, the recovery of all Spain by the Christians was only a matter of time. Every nation, it appears, has its time of growth and its period of efflorescence, after which comes the age of decay. As Greece fell, as Rome fell, as every ancient kingdom the world has known has risen, triumphed, and fallen, so fell the Moors in Spain. Their time was now near at hand. They had been divided and undisciplined before the Almoravide annexation: they were not less so when their Berber masters had been expelled. But hardly had the Almoravides disappeared, when a new enemy came on the scene. The Almohades, or fanatical "Unitarians," who had overthrown the power of the Almoravides in Africa, resolved to imitate their vanquished predecessors by including Andalusia in their empire. The dissensions among the princes of the long-shattered kingdom of the Moors made the task an easy one. In 1145 the Almohades took Algeciras; in 1146 they occupied Seville and Malaga, and the next four years saw Cordova and the rest of southern Spain united under their sway. Some princes, indeed, held out for a while, but the hordes of African fanatics were too overpowering for any single chief to make a protracted stand against them. [Illustration: BANNER OF THE ALMOHADES.] The Almohades, however, had no thought of making Andalusia the centre of their government. They ruled it from Africa, and the consequence was that their hold upon Spain was weak. The disturbed provinces of Andalusia were not easily to be retained by princes who contented themselves with deputies sent from Morocco, and with an occasional expedition to repel the attacks of the Christians. When they came in force their efforts were generally crowned with success. They won a splendid victory over the Christians in 1195 at Alarcos, near Badajoz, where thousands of the enemy were slain, and immense spoils fell into the hands of the fanatics. But the fortune of war changed when, in 1212, the disastrous field of Las Navas decided the fate of the Almohades. Of 600,000 men, few escaped to tell the tale of slaughter. City after city fell into the hands of the Christians; and family dissensions among the foreigners, and the attacks of rival dynasties in Africa, enabled the chiefs of Andalusia, who had grown impatient of the spasmodic rule of their foreign masters, in 1235, to drive the Almohades out of the peninsula. An Arab chief, Ibn-Hūd, then made himself master of most of the south of Spain, and even of Ceuta in Africa; but he died in 1238, and the command of Andalusia now devolved upon the Beny-Nasr of Granada.