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A few leagues from the city, within full view of it, and at the entrance of the Alpuxarras mountains, stood the powerful castle of Alhendin. It was built on an eminence rising from the midst of a small town, and commanding a great part of the Vega and the main road to the rich valleys of the Alpuxarras.
In return for these possessions and for the claim of El Zagal to the rest of the kingdom the sovereigns received him into their friendship and alliance, and gave him in perpetual inheritance the territory of Andarax and the valley of Alhaurin in the Alpuxarras, with the fourth part of the salinas or salt-pits of Malaha.
Cautious in his policy, and fond of conquests gained by art rather than valor, he resorted to the plan so successful with Baza, and determined to reduce the place by famine. For this purpose his armies penetrated into the very heart of the Alpuxarras, and ravaged the valleys and sacked and burnt the towns upon which the city depended for its supplies.
These predatory excursions were frequent about this time, and the Moors of Padul, Alhenden, and other towns of the Alpuxarras had recently harassed the Christian territories by expeditions of the kind.
In a word, the Alpuxarras mountains had ever been the great source of revenue to the monarchs of Granada. Their inhabitants also were hardy and warlike, and a sudden summons from the Moorish king could at any time call forth fifty thousand fighting-men from their rocky fastnesses. Such was the rich but rugged fragment of an empire which remained under the sway of the old warrior-monarch El Zagal.
He saw in the hunting campaigns and royal progresses of the ex-king a mode of keeping up a military spirit and a concerted intelligence among the Moors of the Alpuxarras that might prepare them for future rebellion. By degrees the very residence of Boabdil within the kingdom became incompatible with Ferdinand's ideas of security.
The surrender of Almeria was followed by that of Almunecar, Salobrena, and other fortified places of the coast and the interior, and detachments of Christian troops took quiet possession of the Alpuxarras mountains and their secluded and fertile valleys.* * Cura de los Palacios, cap. 93, 94; Pulgar, Cron., part 3, cap. 124; Garibay, Comp. Hist., lib. 18, cap. 37, etc. etc.
"In sooth it was a thing to weep If then as now the level plain Beneath was spreading like the deep, The broad unruffled main. If like a watch-tower of the sun Above, the Alpuxarras rose, Streaked, when the dying day was done, "With evening's roseate snows."
The Spanish sovereigns fixed their throne in the presence-chamber of the palace, so long the seat of Moorish royalty. Hither the principal inhabitants of Granada repaired to pay them homage and kiss their hands in token of vassalage, and their example was followed by deputies from all the towns and fortresses of the Alpuxarras which had not hitherto submitted.
Besides these, his territories included a great part of the Alpuxarras mountains, which extend across the kingdom and shoot out branches toward the sea-coast. This mountainous region was a stronghold of wealth and power.
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