avaliers
of Granada also, spurning the quiet and security of Christian vassalage,
secretly left the city and hastened to join their fighting countrymen.
The great dependence of El Zagal, however, was upon the valor and
loyalty of his cousin and brother-in-law, Cid Hiaya Alnagar,* who was
alcayde of Almeria--a cavalier experienced in warfare and redoubtable in
the field. He wrote to him to leave Almeria and repair with all speed at
the head of his troops to Baza. Cid Hiaya departed immediately with ten
thousand of the bravest Moors in the kingdom. These were for the most
part hardy mountaineers, tempered to sun and storm and tried in many a
combat. None equalled them for a sally or a skirmish. They were adroit
in executing a thousand stratagems, ambuscadoes, and evolutions.
Impetuous in their assaults, yet governed in their utmost fury by a word
or sign from their commander, at the sound of a trumpet they would check
themselves in the midst of their career, wheel off and disperse, and at
another sound of a trumpet they would as suddenly reassemble and return
to the attack. They were upon the enemy when least expected, coming like
a rushing blast, spreading havoc and consternation, and then passing
away in an instant; so that when one recovered from the shock and looked
around, behold, nothing was to be seen or heard of this tempest of war
but a cloud of dust and the clatter of retreating hoofs.**

* This name has generally been written Cidi Yahye. The present mode
is adopted on the authority of Alcantara in his History of Granada,
who appears to have derived it from Arabic manuscripts existing in the
archives of the marques de Corvera, descendant of Cid Hiaya. The latter
(Cid Hiaya) was son of Aben Zelim, a deceased prince of Almeria, and was
a lineal descendant from the celebrated Aben Hud, surnamed the Just. The
wife of Cid Hiaya was sister of the two Moorish generals, Abul Cacim and
Reduan Vanegas, and, like them, the fruit of the union of a Christian
knight, Don Pedro Vanegas, with Cetimerien, a Moorish princess.

* *Pulgar, part 3, c. 106.

When Cid Hiaya led his train of ten thousand valiant warriors into
the gates of Baza, the city rang with acclamations and for a time the
inhabitants thought themselves secure. El Zagal also felt a glow of
confidence, notwithstanding his own absence from the city. "Cid Hiaya,"
said he, "is my cousin and my brother-in-law; related to me by blood and
marriage, he