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This city, powerful from the remotest times, and supposed to be the ancient Illiberis of the Romans, was built upon two hills, not far distant from the Sierra Nevada, a chain of mountains whose summits are covered with perpetual snow. The town was traversed by the river Darra, and the waters of the Xenil bathed its walls.
Ferdinand resolved also to lay siege to Loxa, or Loja, a city of great strength at no great distance from Alhama, and all-important to its protection. It was, in fact, a military point situated in a pass of the mountains between the kingdoms of Granada and Castile, and commanded a main entrance to the Vega. The Xenil flowed by its walls, and it had a strong castle or citadel built on a rock.
The river Darro rises in a rocky gorge of the neighboring mountains, and comes tumbling down the valley within a stone's-throw of the gypsies' cave-dwellings, thence flows through the town, and is joined by the Xenil on the plain of Granada.
He had slain many Moslem chiefs with his own arm, and among others the renowned Ali Atar of Loxa, fighting foot to foot, on the banks of the Xenil. His judgment, discretion, magnanimity, and justice vied with his prowess. He was the fifth lord of his warlike house that fell in battle with the Moors.
The king now advanced with a splendid escort of cavalry and the sound of trumpets, until he came to a small mosque near the banks of the Xenil, and not far from the foot of the Hill of Martyrs, which edifice remains to the present day consecrated as the hermitage of St. Sebastian. Here he beheld the unfortunate king of Granada approaching on horseback at the head of his slender retinue.
Christian and Moor might now be seen mingling courteously on the banks of the Xenil and the Darro, where to have met a few days previous would have produced a scene of sanguinary contest.
King Almanzor of Granada, he hath bid the trumpet sound, He hath summonded all the Moorish lords, from the hills and plains around; From vega and sierra, from Betis and Xenil, They have come with helm and cuirass of gold and twisted steel.
"Never," cried Ali Atar, "to a Christian dog!" The words were scarce out of his mouth when the sword of Don Alonso clove his turbaned head and sank deep into the brain. He fell dead without a groan; his body rolled into the Xenil, nor was it ever found or recognized.* Thus fell Ali Atar, who had long been the terror of Andalusia.
Far as the eye could reach extended the glittering and gorgeous lines of that goodly power, bristling with sunlit spears and blazoned banners; while beside murmured, and glowed, and danced, the silver and laughing Xenil, careless what lord should possess, for his little day, the banks that bloomed by its everlasting course. By a small mosque halted the flower of the army.
The same observations apply to Mahometanism. In India it has always shown itself more contemplative, more tolerant, than in Arabia, Turkey, or on the northern coast of Africa, and when it propagated itself in the southern regions of Europe, its stern inflexibility was not able to resist even the influence of clime; the perfumed breezes of the Betis and the Xenil despoiled it, in part, of the austere physiognomy which had been impressed on its whole structure by the sands of Arabia.
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