The Khalif had still thirty years more to reign when he adopted this new name; and they were filled chiefly with wise and cultivated administration at home, and with constant, even annual, expeditions against the Christians, against whom he was indeed a "Defender" of his religion. The civil war, which had for a time neutralized the power of the Leonese, had now given place to the authority of a worthy successor of the great Ordoño. Ramiro II. succeeded in 931, and his warlike character soon asserted itself in resolute opposition to the Khalif's armies. Not long afterwards a formidable league was formed in the north between the Christians and the Arab governor of Zaragoza, and Abd-er-Rahmān hastened to demolish the coalition. In 937 he reduced Zaragoza, and, marching on Navarre, spread such terror around his way that the Queen Regent, Theuda, hastily paid him homage as her suzerain. Ramiro, however, was no party to this surrender. He gathered his men together, and inflicted a tremendous defeat on the Moslems in 939 at Alhandega. Fifty thousand Moors fell upon the field: the Khalif himself barely escaped with his life, and found himself flying through the country with less than fifty horsemen. That disastrous year was long known in Andalusia as the "Year of Alhandega." Had the Christians pressed their advantage, a different history of Spain would perhaps have had to be written; but, as usual, internecine jealousies among the Christian princes came to the help of the Khalif, and while his foes quarrelled among themselves he repaired his disaster, recruited his army, and made ready for another campaign. The civil war which thus aided him had its origin in the revolt of Castile from the Leonese supremacy. The Count of Castile at this time was the celebrated Fernando Gonzalez, of whom many minstrels have sung. He is one of the great Spanish heroes, and was mated to a heroine. Twice did his wife rescue him from the prison into which he had been cast by his jealous neighbours of Navarre and Leon, and the second time she did it by exchanging clothes with her husband and exposing herself to the fury of his jailers. The earlier occasion was before their marriage, when he was on his way to her father Garcia's court at Navarre, to ask her hand in marriage, and the perfidious king laid hands upon him. A ballad tells the story of his release: They have carried afar into Navarre the great Count of Castille, And they have bound him sorely, they have bound him hand and heel.... And there is joy and feasting because that lord is ta'en, King Garci in his dungeon holds the doughtiest lord in Spain. The poet goes on to tell how a Norman knight was riding through Navarre-- For Christ his hope he came to cope with the Moorish scimitar: and how he told Garcia's daughter of the captivity of Gonzalez, and how grievous an injury it was to the cause of Christian Spain--