In the following year the great Khalif died. He was seventy years old, and his reign, of nearly fifty, had brought about such a change in the condition of Spain as the wildest imagination could hardly conjure up. When he came to the throne, a youth of twenty-one, his inheritance was the prey to a thousand brigand chiefs or local adventurers; the provinces had set up their own rulers; the many factions into which the population was divided had each and all defied the authority of the Sultan; and anarchy and plunder devastated the land. On the south the African dynasty of the Fātimites threatened to engulf Spain in their empire; on the north the Christian princes seemed ready to descend upon their ancestral dominions and drive the Moors from the land. Out of this chaos and vision of imminent destruction Abd-er-Rahmān had evolved order and prosperity. Before half his reign was over he had restored peace and good government throughout the length and breadth of the Moslem dominions; he had banished the authority of parties, and established the absolute power of the Sultan over all classes of his subjects. In the second half he maintained the dignity and might of his State against outside foes; held the African despots at a distance, planted a garrison at Ceuta to withstand their advance, and contended with them on equal terms on the sea; and in the north he curbed the growing power of the Christians of Leon, Castile, and Navarre, and so convinced them of his superiority that they even came to him to settle their differences and restore them to their rights. He had rescued Andalusia both from herself and from subjection by the foreigner.[21] And he had not only saved her from destruction; he had made her great and happy. Never was Cordova so rich and prosperous as under his rule; never was Andalusia so well cultivated, so teeming with the gifts of nature, brought to perfection by the skill and industry of man; never was the State so triumphant over disorder, or the power of the law more widely felt and respected. Ambassadors came to pay him court from the Emperor of Constantinople, from the kings of France, of Germany, of Italy. His power, wisdom, and opulence, were a byword over Europe and Africa, and had even reached to the furthest limits of the Moslem empire in Asia. And this wonderful change had been wrought by one man, with everything against him: the restoration of Andalusia from the hopeless depths of misery to the height of power and prosperity had been effected by the intellect and will alone of the Great Khalif Abd-er-Rahmān III.