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Sending men to the mountain-tops, he had alarm fires kindled as a signal to the peasants that the Moors were out and their herds in peril. Couriers were also despatched at speed to rouse the country and bid all capable of bearing arms to rendezvous at Castellar, a stronghold which Abul Hassan would have to pass on his return. The Moorish king saw the fire signals and knew well what they meant.
But the lad turned to the Caliph and begged that he might now be allowed to hand over the case to him. "When I pronounced sentence last night, it was but in play," said he. "But this is not play. A man's life is at stake, and I dare not pronounce sentence upon him." To this request the Caliph agreed. "Abul Hassan, you have condemned yourself," he said.
Muley Abul Hassan had mustered an army and marched to the relief of Loxa, but arrived too late; the last squadron of Ferdinand had already passed over the border. "They have come and gone," said he, "like a summer cloud, and all their vaunting has been mere empty thunder."
* Zurita, Anales de Aragon, 1. 20, c. 42; Mariana, Hist. de Espana 1. 25, c. 1; Bleda, Coron. de los Moros, l. 5, c. 3. Aben Ismael was faithful in observing the conditions of the truce, but they were regarded with impatience by his eldest son, Muley Abul Hassan, a prince of a fiery and belligerent spirit, and fond of casing himself in armor and mounting his war-horse.
Muley Abul Hassan, at the head of a powerful force, had hurried from Granada, and passed unobserved through the mountains in the obscurity of the tempest. While the storm pelted the sentinel from his post and bowled round tower and battlement, the Moors had planted their scaling-ladders and mounted securely into both town and castle.
It is occupied by a lineal descendant of Salîm Chishti, and is only rarely shown to visitors. The Houses of Abul Fazl and Faizi. The houses where these two famous brothers, the friends of Akbar, lived, are close under the north wall of the great mosque. Their father, Sheikh Mubarak, was one of the most learned men of the age, and the sons were as distinguished as the father.
The latter, on the other hand, were supported by the noble and once-potent family of the Abencerrages and by Aben Comixa, alcayde of the Alhambra; and between these two factions, headed by rival sultanas, the harem of Muley Abul Hassan became the scene of inveterate jealousies and intrigues, which in time, as will be shown, led to popular commotions and civil wars.
As the years went on Muley Abul Hassan became sadly stricken with age. He grew nearly blind and was bed-ridden with paralysis. His brother Abdallah, known as El Zagal, or "The Valiant," commander-in-chief of the Moorish armies, assumed his duties as a sovereign, and zealously took up the quarrel with his son.
The Moorish king, Abul Hassan, returned, baffled and disappointed, from before the walls of Alhama, and was received with groans and smothered execrations by the people of Granada. The prediction of the santon was in every mouth, and appeared to be rapidly fulfilling, for the enemy was already strongly fortified in Alhama, in the very heart of the kingdom.
The above mentioned brothers Faizî and Abul Fazl introduced to his impressionable spirit the exalted teaching of Sûfism, the Mohammedan mysticism whose spiritual pantheism had its origin in, or at least was strongly influenced by, the doctrine of the All-One, held by the Brahman Vedânta system.
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