oth nations and both laws. May God confound his arrogance, and
prosper those who walk in the right way!"

One passage of the same letter says: "Fatigued with war, we were willing
to offer thee an annual tribute; but this does not satisfy thee: thou
wishest us to deliver into thine hands our towns and fortresses; but are
we thy subjects, that thou makest such demands, or hast thou ever
subdued us? Thine injustice has roused us from our lethargy," etc.]

As the King of Saragossa was too much in fear of the Christians to enter
into any league against them, and as the one of Valencia (Yahia) reigned
only at the pleasure of Alfonso, the sovereigns of Badajoz, Almeria, and
Granada were the only powers on whose cooeperation he could calculate (he
had annihilated the authority of several petty kings). He invited those
princes to send their representatives to Seville, to consult as to the
measures necessary to protect their threatened independence. The
invitation was readily accepted. On the day appointed, Mahomet, with his
son Al Raxid and a considerable number of his _wazirs_ and _cadis_, was
present at the deliberations. The danger was so imminent--the force of
the Christians was so augmented, and that of the Moslems so weakened--
that such resistance as Mahometan Spain alone could offer seemed
hopeless. With this conviction in their hearts, two of the most
influential cadis proposed an appeal to the celebrated African
conqueror, Yussef ben Taxfin, whose arm alone seemed able to preserve
the faith of Islam in the Peninsula.

The proposal was received with general applause by all present: they did
not make the very obvious reflection that when a nation admits into its
bosom an ally more powerful than itself, it admits at the same time a
conqueror. The wali of Malaga alone, Abdallah ben Zagut, had courage to
oppose the dangerous embassy under consideration: "You mean to call in
the aid of the Almoravides! Are you ignorant that these fierce
inhabitants of the desert resemble their own native tigers? Suffer them
not, I beseech you, to enter the fertile plains of Andulasia and
Granada! Doubtless they would break the iron sceptre which Alfonso
intends for us; but you would still be doomed to wear the chains of
slavery. Do you not know that Yussef has taken all the cities of
Almagreb; that he has subdued the powerful tribes of the east and west;
that he has everywhere substituted despotism for liberty and
independence?" The aged Z