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Updated: July 21, 2025
The Moors saw too late the subtle manoeuvre of King Ferdinand. Cid Hiaya again sallied forth with a large force of horse and foot, and pressed furiously upon the Christians. The latter; however, experienced in Moorish attack, retired in close order, sometimes turning upon the enemy and driving them to their barricadoes, and then pursuing their retreat.
El Zagal was seated on his divan, his whole spirit absorbed in rumination on the transitory nature of human glory, when his kinsman and brother-in-law, the prince Cid Hiaya, was announced.
The Moors, notwithstanding repeated defeats and losses, continued to sally forth daily with astonishing spirit and vigor, and the obstinacy of their defence seemed to increase with their sufferings. The prince Cid Hiaya was ever foremost in these sallies, but grew daily more despairing of success.
"But it is given to saints and pious monarchs," says he, "to work miracles in the cause of the faith; and such did the most Catholic Ferdinand in the conversion of the prince Cid Hiaya." The policy of the Catholic monarch was at all times equal to his piety.
So the old monarch bowed his haughty neck and agreed to surrender his territories to the enemies of his faith, rather than suffer them to augment the Moslem power under the sway of his nephew. Cid Hiaya now returned to Baza, empowered by El Zagal to treat on his behalf with the Christian sovereigns.
The prince Cid Hiaya and his brave companions-in-arms were thus gradually walled up, as it were, from the rest of the world. A line of towers, the battlements of which bristled with troops, girded their city, and behind the intervening bulwarks and palisadoes passed and repassed continual squadrons of troops.
He purchased of him three-and-twenty towns and villages in the valleys of Andarax and Alhaurin, for which he gave him five millions of maravedis. El Zagal relinquished his right to one-half of the salinas or salt-pits of Malaha in favor of his brother-in-law, Cid Hiaya.
The prince Cid Hiaya took heart at these words, and counted the days as they passed until the stormy season should commence. As he watched the Christian camp he beheld it one morning in universal commotion: there was an unusual sound of hammers in every part, as if some new engines of war were constructing.
The attention of the Moorish king was diverted also, for a time, by an ineffectual attempt to relieve the little port of Adra, which had recently declared in his favor, but which had been recaptured for the Christians by Cid Hiaya and his son Alnayar. Thus, the unlucky Boabdil, bewildered on every hand, lost all the advantage that he had gained by his rapid march from Granada.
Here he was joined by many powerful cavaliers, relatives of Abul Cacim and partisans of Zoraya, among whom were Cid Hiaya, Aben Jamy, and Reduan Vanegas, men who had alcaydes, vassals, at their command, and possessed great influence in Almeria and Baza. He was joined also by his brother Abdallah, commonly called El Zagal, or the Valiant, who was popular in many parts of the kingdom.
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