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Updated: May 14, 2025
So Chris 'e sort of argued with them, for 'e was frightened of Berks, and 'e put it to them whether they would be fit for the job in the mornin', and whether the gov'nor would pay the money if 'e found they 'ad been drinkin' and were not to be trusted. This struck them sober, all three, an' Fighting Yussef asked what time they were to start.
Much as the world had been astounded at the preparations of his grandfather Yussef, they were not surpassed by his own, if, as we are credibly informed, one alone of the five divisions of his army amounted to one hundred and sixty thousand men.
The officer who carried the order instead of Lisbon named Seville; the whole Moslem army were sure that some disaster was impending, and that the siege was to be raised; before morning the camp was deserted, the guard alone of Yussef remaining.
Indeed, they were all too busy to heed the bishop’s blows, for, so the chronicle says, only fifteen thousand of the Moslems escaped. Yussef, sorely wounded, left to the Cid his famous sword Tisona, and barely escaped from the field with his life. Bucar, the brother of Yussef, came to revenge him, but he knew not with whom he had to deal.
With this conviction in their hearts, two of the most influential cadis proposed an appeal to the celebrated African conqueror, Yussef ben Taxfin, whose arm alone seemed able to preserve the faith of Islam in the Peninsula.
Do you not know that Yussef has taken all the cities of Almagreb; that he has subdued the powerful tribes of the east and west; that he has everywhere substituted despotism for liberty and independence?" The aged Zagut spoke in vain: he was even accused of being a secret partisan of the Christian; and the embassy was decreed.
At the head of all the forces he could muster he advanced toward Andalusia, and encountered Yussef on the plains of Zalaca, between Badajoz and Merida. As the latter was a strict observer of the outward forms of his religion, he summoned the Christian King by letter to embrace the faith of the Prophet or consent to pay an annual tribute or prepare for immediate battle.
But this present demonstration of force proved as useless as the preceding: it ended in nothing; owing partly to the dissensions of Mahometans, and partly to the activity of the Christians, who not only rendered abortive the measures of the enemy, but gained some signal advantages over them. Yussef was forced to retreat on Almeida.
That Mahomet should have been so blind as to not perceive the designs involved in the insidious proposal is almost enough to make one agree with the Arabic historians that destiny had decreed he should fall by his own measures. The place was not only surrendered to the artful Moor, but Mahomet himself went to Morocco to hasten the departure of Yussef.
With equal hypocrisy Yussef humbly thanked him for his abdication; the sheiks and walis were summoned to witness the renewed declaration of the emir, after which the two princes separated. The following day, however, Abu-Bekr received a magnificent present from Yussef, who, indeed, continued to send him one every year to the period of his death. Such a gift was worthy of royalty.
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