While the capital was torn to pieces by savage bands of Slavs and Berbers, and was setting up one khalif after another, varying the family of Omeyya with that of Hammūd, or trying the effect of a governing town council, the provinces had long thrown off all allegiance to the central State. Every city or district had its own independent lord--so soon had the consolidating effects of Almanzor's rule disappeared. The Spaniards themselves enjoyed little of this sudden accession of small powers. They had to look on and lament, while foreigners divided their land among them. Berber generals fattened upon the South; the Slavs subdued the East; "the rest fell to parvenus or to the few noble families who had by some accident survived the blows which Abd-er-Rahmān III. and Almanzor had dealt at the aristocracy. Cordova and Seville, the two most important cities of Andalus, had set up republics,"[25] in name, however, rather than fact; for the Moslem First Consul was a very close likeness of the Emperor. In the first half of the eleventh century some twenty independent dynasties came into power in as many towns or provinces, among which the Abbadites of Seville, the Hammūd family at Malaga and Algeciras, the Zirites at Granada, the Beny Hūd at Zaragoza, the Dhu-n-Nūn dynasty at Toledo, and the rulers of Valencia, Murcia, and Almeria, were the most important. Some of these dynasts were good rulers, most of them were sanguinary tyrants, but (curiously) not the less polished gentlemen, who delighted to do honour to learning and _belles lettres_, and made their courts the homes of poets and musicians. Mo'temid of Seville, for instance, was a prince of many accomplishments, yet he kept a garden of heads, cut off his enemies' shoulders, which he regarded with great pride and delight. As a whole, however, the country was a prey to disorder as intolerable and as dangerous as that which had prevailed when the Great Khalif came to the throne. It was not quite the same in character; for there was no great Christian rebellion like that of Ibn-Hafsūn; but the anarchy was as universal, and the danger of a total collapse more imminent than ever.