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Mohammed arrived at the court of Seville accompanied by a suite composed of his most faithful friends, and bearing with him vast treasures. He presented himself with noble confidence in the presence of the monarch. "King of Castile!" said he to Peter, "the blood alike of Christian and Moor has too long flowed in my contest with the Farady.
We have seen Grenada divided, since the violent termination of the reign of Ismael, between the factions of the Alhamar and the Farady, and the former deposed by the latter, who always regarded the Alhamars as usurpers. This unhappy contest was the source of numberless disorders, conspiracies, and assassinations.
From that period the royal family of Grenada was divided into two branches, which were ever after at enmity with each other; the one, called the Alhamar, included the descendants of the first king through the males of the line, and the other, named Farady, was that of such of his offspring as were the children of the female branches of the royal race.
Peter the Cruel, then king of Castile, espoused the cause of the banished Farady, supported his claims by warlike arguments, and so closely pressed Mohammed the Alhamar, that he adopted the resolution of repairing to Seville, and abandoning himself to the magnanimity of his royal foe.
But the usurper himself was soon driven from his throne by Farady, the ancient minister, who, not daring to appropriate the crown to himself, placed it on the head of his son Ismael, the nephew of Mohammed the Blind, through his mother, the sister of that monarch. This event took place A.D. 1313, Heg. 713.
Grenada was at last tranquil after the crime of Peter the Cruel. Mohammed the Old, or the Farady, being now freed from the rival claims of his competitor, remounted the throne without opposition. Mohammed was the only ally of the King of Castile who remained faithful to that inhuman monster up to the period of his death.
You protect my rival; yet it is you whom I select to adjudge our quarrel. Examine my claims and those of my enemy, and pronounce who shall be the sovereign of Grenada. If you decide in favour of the Farady, I demand only to be conducted to Africa; if you accord the preference to me, receive the homage that I have come to render you for my crown!"
Compelled by the infirmity from which he derived his appellation to choose a prime minister, he bestowed that important post upon Farady, the husband of his sister, a judicious statesman and a brave soldier, who for some time prosperously continued the war against the Castilians, and finally concluded it by an honourable peace.
The monarch next in order to Joseph I. on the throne of Grenada was his uncle, a Farady prince named Mohammed VI., and called the Old, in consequence of his succeeding at a somewhat advanced period of life.
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