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Al-mansur had a worthy successor in his son Abdul-malek, who at once received the appointment of Hajib from the passive Khalif: but on his death in 1008, the post was assumed by his brother Abdurrahman, popularly known as Shanjul, a Berber word signifying madman a surname which he had earned by his habits of low vice and intemperance.
The dates of his birth and death are not known with certainty, but he is said to have lived to the age of one hundred years, and to have survived the third Fatimide Calif Al-Mansur, who died in 953. Accordingly we may assume the years of his birth and death as 855 and 955 respectively.
Secure of the support of the soldiery, whose affections he had gained by his liberality, Al-mansur so little affected to disguise his assumption of supremacy, that he ordered his own name to be struck on the coin, and repeated in the public prayers, along with that of Hisham, thus arrogating to himself a share in the two most inalienable prerogatives of sovereignty.
The martial spirit of the Spanish Moslems appears, from various anecdotes related by Al-Makkari, to have suffered great deterioration from the progress of luxury and decay of discipline; but the armies led by Al-mansur were mainly recruited from the fiery tribes of Barbary, and strengthened by numerous Christian slaves or Mamlukes, trained to serve their captors in arms against their own countrymen.
"No Moslem general had ever penetrated as far as that city, which is in an inaccessible position in the most remote part of Galicia, and is a sanctuary regarded by the Christians with veneration equal to that which the Moslems entertain for the Kaaba," but Al-mansur, supplied with provisions from a fleet which accompanied his march along the coast of Portugal, forced his way through the Galician defiles, and occupied the holy city without opposition all the inhabitants having fled, according to Ibn Hayyan, with the exception of an old monk who tended the tomb.
It seems, in truth, to have been nearly a drawn battle, with immense carnage on both sides; but the advantage was decidedly with the Christians, who retained possession of the field; while Al-mansur, weakened by the loss of great numbers of his best men and officers, abandoned his camp, and retreated the next day across the Douro.
To such utter helplessness was the khalif reduced, that he was unable even to oppose the removal of the royal treasure fiom Cordova to a fortified palace which Al-mansur had built for his residence, not far from Az-zahra, and had named, as if in mockery, Az-zahirah; and the Hajib was at one time obliged to quiet the murmurs of the populace, who doubted whether their sovereign was still in existence, by leading him in procession through the streets of the capital; "and the eyes of the people feasted on what had been so long concealed from them."
The precise locality of this famous battle is not very clearly ascertained; but Condé places it betveen Soria and Medinaceli. The battle is placed by the Christian writers in 998; but the death of Al-mansur, which both Christians and Moslems agree in stating to have taken place within a very short time, is said by the latter to have been A.M. 392, A.D. 1002.
Certain new and important diseases were described; a number of new and active remedies were introduced, chiefly from the vegetable kingdom. The Arabian hospitals were well organized and were deservedly famous. No such hospital exists today in Cairo as that which was built by al-Mansur Gilafun in 1283.
"This enlightened and never-vanquished Hajib" says Al-Makkali, with whom Al-mansur is a favourite hero "used continually to ask God to permit him to die in his service and in war against the infidels, and thus his desire was granted;... and after his death, the Mohammedan empire in Andalus began to show visible signs of decay."
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