sim, Jahiah, Hacchem III.,
Mohammed, Abderamus V., Jahiah II., Hacchem IV., and Jalmar-ben-Mohammed.

{85}

THIRD EPOCH.

CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF THE PRINCIPAL KINGDOMS THAT SPRANG FROM THE
RUINS OF THE CALIPHATE.

_Extending from the Commencement of the Eleventh to the Middle of the
Thirteenth Century._

At the commencement of the eleventh century, when the throne of Cordova
was daily stained by the blood of some new usurper, the governors of
the different cities, as has been already remarked, had assumed the
title of kings. Toledo, Saragossa, Seville, Valencia, Lisbon, Huesca,
and several other places of inferior importance, each possessed
independent sovereigns.

The history of these numerous kingdoms would be nearly as fatiguing to
the reader as to the writer. It presents, for the space of two hundred
years, nothing but accounts of repeated massacres, of fortresses taken
and retaken, of pillages and seditions, of occasional instances of
heroic conduct, but far more numerous crimes. Passing rapidly over two
centuries of {86} misfortunes, let it suffice to contemplate the
termination of these petty Moorish sovereignties.

Christian Spain, in the mean time, presented nearly the same picture as
that exhibited by the portion of the Peninsula still in possession of
the Mohammedans. The kings of Leon, Navarre, Castile, and Aragon were
almost always relatives, and sometimes brothers; but they were not, for
that reason, the less sanguinary in their designs towards each other.
Difference of religion did not prevent them from uniting with the
Moors, the more effectually to oppress other Christians, or other Moors
with whom they chanced to be at enmity. Thus, in a battle which
occurred A.D. 1010 between two Mussulman leaders, there were found
among the slain a count of Urgel and three bishops of Catalonia.[1]
And the King of Leon, Alphonso V., gave his sister Theresa in marriage
to Abdalla, the Moorish king of Toledo, to convert him into an ally
against Castile.

Among the Christians, as among the Moors, crimes were multiplied; civil
wars of both a local and general nature at the same time distracted
Spain, and the unhappy people expiated with {87} their property and
their lives the iniquities of their rulers.

While thus regarding a long succession of melancholy events, it is
agreeable to find a king of Toledo called Almamon, and Benabad, the
Mussulman king of Seville, affording an asylum at their cou