The kingdom of Granada was the last bulwark of the Moors in Spain. It was not much that was now left to them. Between 1238 and 1260, Fernando III. of Castile and Jayme I. of Aragon conquered Valencia, Cordova, Seville, and Murcia; and the rule of the Moors was now restricted to the present province of Granada, _i.e._, the country about the Sierra Nevada and the sea coast from Almeria to Gibraltar. Within this limit, however, their kingdom was destined to endure for another two centuries and a half. Though hemmed in on all sides, the Moors were well served by soldiers. The people of the conquered cities, the most valiant warriors of the vanquished Moslem states, came to place their swords at the disposal of the one remaining Mohammedan king. Fifty thousand Moors are recorded to have fled to his protection from Valencia, and three hundred thousand from Seville, Xeres, and Cadiz. Nevertheless, Granada was forced to become tributary to the Castilian crown. The founder of the dynasty of the Beny-Nasr, an Arab named Ibn-el-Ahmar, or the "Red man," because of his fair skin and hair, was a vigorous sovereign, but he could not withstand the power of the Christians, who now held nearly the whole of Spain. He paid homage and tribute to Fernando and his son Alfonso the Learned, not, however, without more than one struggle to free himself from their yoke; and from that time forward Granada with its surrounding territory was generally let alone by the Christian kings, who had enough to do to settle their already vast acquired territory and to do away with local pretenders. From time to time the Moors made war upon their Christian neighbours, but eventually they had to make up their minds to a secondary position. The sum of twelve thousand gold ducats was the tribute paid by Mohammed X., in 1463, as a condition of peace. During these two centuries the Moorish territory had suffered little diminution. Gibraltar had been lost and won and lost again; other places, notably Algeciras, had become part of the Christian dominions; but the general extent of the Moslem realm remained in the third quarter of the fifteenth century much what it had been in the first half of the thirteenth. [Illustration: SHIELD OF A KING OF GRANADA.]