Boabdil, indeed, had been made prisoner and was now a captive on his way to Cordova, while Ferdinand ravaged the Vega, and old Muley Abu-l-Hasan, who now returned to his kingdom, ground his teeth in impotent rage behind his stout ramparts. [Illustration] [Illustration] XIII. THE FALL OF GRANADA. The capture of Boabdil by the Christian sovereigns was a fatal blow to the Moorish power. The loss of the prince himself was the smallest part of the misfortune. Boabdil, though he could show true Moorish courage in the battle-field, was a weak and vacillating man, and was perpetually oppressed by the conviction that destiny was against him. He was known as Ez-Zogoiby, "the Unlucky;" and he was ever lamenting his evil star, against which he felt it was useless to struggle. "Verily," he would exclaim, after every reverse, "it was written in the book of fate that I should be unlucky, and that the kingdom should come to an end under my rule!" Boabdil could easily be spared; but innocuous as he was in himself, he might become dangerous in the hands of a clever adversary; and events showed that Boabdil's subjection to Ferdinand contributed as much as any other cause to the overthrow of the Moorish power in Andalusia. The Catholic sovereigns received him with honour at Cordova, and, by friendly persuasion and arguments drawn from his own desperate situation and the strongly contrasted successes of the Christians, they induced him to become their instrument and vassal. As soon as they felt that they had completely mastered their tool, the politic king and queen suffered him to return to Granada, where his father, Abu-l-Hasan, once more held the fortress of the Alhambra. Favoured by his old supporters in the Albaycin quarter of the city, Boabdil managed to effect an entrance, and to seize the citadel or keep called Alcazaba, whence he carried on a guerilla warfare with his father in the opposite fort. The quarrel was further embittered by the rivalry between the wives of Abu-l-Hasan. Ayesha, the mother of Boabdil, was intensely jealous of a Christian lady, Zoraya, whom Abu-l-Hasan loved far beyond his other wives; and the chief courtiers took up the cause of either queen. Thus arose the celebrated antagonism between the Zegris, a Berber tribe from Aragon, who supported Ayesha, and the Abencerrages, or Beny-Serrāj, an old Cordovan family, which ended in the celebrated massacre of the Abencerrages in the Palace of Alhambra, though whether Boabdil was the author of this butchery is still matter of doubt. Supported by the Zegris, Boabdil for some time held his ground in the citadel. Old Abu-l-Hasan was too strong for him, however, and the son was soon compelled to take refuge at Almeria. Henceforward there were always two kings of Granada: Boabdil, on the one hand, always unlucky, whether in policy or battle, and despised by good Moors as the vassal of the common enemy; on the other, Abu-l-Hasan, or rather his brother