Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/552

406 406 WAR OF GRANADA. PART foment the dissensions of their enemies. The
 * young king Abdallah, after his humiliating treaty

with Ferdinand, lost whatever consideration he had previously possessed. Although the sultana Zoraja, bj her personal address, and the lavish distribution of the royal treasures, contrived to maintain a fac- tion for her son, the better classes of his country- men despised him as a renegade, and a vassal of the Christian king. As their old monarch had be- come incompetent, from increasing age and blind- ness, to the duties of his station in these perilous times, they turned their eyes on his brother Ab- dallah, surnamed El Zagal, or " The Valiant," who had borne so conspicuous a part in the rout of the Axarquia. The Castilians depict this chief in the darkest colors of ambition and cruelty ; but the Moslem writers afford no such intimation, and his advancement to the throne at that crisis seems to be in some measure justified by his eminent talents as a military leader. On his M^ay to Granada, he encountered and cut to pieces a body of Calatrava knights from Alhama, and signalized his entrance into his new capital by bearing along the bloody trophies of heads dangling from his saddlebow, after the bar- barous fashion long practised in these wars. ^^ It 38 Conde, Dominacion de los A garland of Christian heads seems Arabes, torn. iii. cap. 37. — Car- to have been deemed no unsuitable donne, Hist. d'Afri(|ue et d'Es- present from a Moslem knight to pagne, tom. iii. pp. 276, 281, 282. his lady love. Thus one of the — Abarca, Reyes de Aragon, tom. Zegries triumphantly asks, ii. fol. 304. " El enjne/.a el caballo " ' «"« Cristinnos haheis muertO» De h.s calioMs .le IUi„a," O escnlado que nit.rallas ? ^ O que riibe/.as laniosas says one of llie old Moorish ballads. Aveis prescmaUo a damas ?"