rds of Fez were wrought in the arabesque fashion; their lances bore
gay bandaroles; their horses were sumptuously caparisoned with housings
of green and crimson velvet, wrought with silk and enamelled with
gold and silver. All this warlike luxury of the youthful chivalry was
encouraged by the Moorish kings, who ordained that no tax should be
imposed on the gold and silver employed in these embellishments; and the
same exception was extended to the bracelets and other ornaments worn
by the fair dames of Granada.

Of the chivalrous gallantry which prevailed between the sexes in this
romantic period of Moorish history we have traces in the thousand
ballads which have come down to our day, and which have given a tone
and coloring to Spanish amatory literature and to everything in Spain
connected with the tender passion.

War was the normal state of Granada and its inhabitants; the common
people were subject at any moment to be summoned to the field, and all
the upper class was a brilliant chivalry. The Christian princes, so
successful in regaining the rest of the Peninsula, found their triumphs
checked at the mountain-boundaries of this kingdom. Every peak had its
atalaya, or watch-tower, ready to make its fire by night or to send
up its column of smoke by day, a signal of invasion at which the whole
country was on the alert. To penetrate the defiles of this perilous
country, to surprise a frontier fortress, or to make a foray into the
Vega and a hasty ravage within sight of the very capital were among the
most favorite and daring exploits of the Castilian chivalry. But they
never pretended to hold the region thus ravaged; it was sack, burn,
plunder, and away; and these desolating inroads were retaliated in
kind by the Moorish cavaliers, whose greatest delight was a "tala,"
or predatory incursion, into the Christian territories beyond the
mountains.

A partisan warfare of this kind had long existed between Granada and its
most formidable antagonists, the kingdoms of Castile and Leon. It was
one which called out the keen yet generous rivalry of Christian and
Moslem cavaliers, and gave rise to individual acts of chivalrous
gallantry and daring prowess; but it was one which was gradually
exhausting the resources and sapping the strength of Granada. One of the
latest of its kings, therefore, Aben Ismael by name, disheartened by a
foray which had laid waste the Vega, and conscious that the balance of
warfare was against his k