Before relating the incidents of the reconquest of Toledo by the Christians and its incorporation in the steadily expanding kingdom of Leon, we will take a glance at the city as it was under its Mohammedan rulers. Of its affluence, importance, and strength, the foregoing cursory sketch of its history has afforded us some idea. It ranked as the metropolis of the Christian element in the Amir’s dominions, and its prelates early obtained recognition from their Paynim sovereigns as dignitaries of the highest standing. Among them were such notable men as Wistremir and Eulogius. One of the archbishops of Toledo, Elipando, embraced the heresy of Nestorius, and went the length of excommunicating his fellow bishops. Upon his death, however, an orthodox successor was chosen. The Christians were wealthy and arrogant. They were classed in congregations, dependent on their various churches, each division including certain families irrespective of their domiciles. Toledo, during the three and a half centuries of Mohammedan dominion, never seems to have lost the outward character of a Christian town. Moorish influence she felt, and it served to soften and chasten her rough features, but Moorish she never became as did Seville and Cordoba. Yet in every corner of the old city the guides are prone to point out the buildings and remains that they fondly believe to be of Arabic workmanship. In reality, very few monuments of the Mohammedan period have survived. It is not by what we see but by what we read that we can form an idea of the city as it was in those days. It was renowned for its clepsydras or water-clocks, invented by Abu-l-Kasim. These are described as follows in an Arabic document: “But what is marvellous and surprising in Toledo, and what we believe no other town in all the world has anything to equal, are its water-clocks. It is said that Az-Zagral [Abu-l-Kasim] hearing of a certain talisman which is in the city of Arin, of Eastern India, and which shows the hours by means of _aspas_ or hands, from the time the sun rises till it sets, determined to fabricate an artifice by means of which the people could know the hour of day or night, and calculate the day of the moon. He made two great ponds in a house on the bank of the Tagus, near the Gate of the Tanners, making them so that they should be filled with water or emptied according to the rise and fall of the moon.” The water began to flow into the ponds as soon as the moon became visible, and at dawn they were four-sevenths full. The water rose by one-seventh every twenty-four hours, and were full at full moon. As the luminary waned, the water fell in exact proportion. The exact working of these contrivances was lost when an astronomer, deputed by Alfonso el Sabio to examine them, broke parts of the intricate machinery.