grown strong, and in a century after Alfonso I. had emerged from their
mountain shelter and removed their court and capital from Oviedo to
Leon, where Alfonso III. held sway over a group of barren kingdoms,
poor, proud, but with _Hidalgos_ and _Dons_, who were keeping alive
the sacred fires of patriotism and of religion. This was the rough
cradle of a Spanish nationality.

They had their own jealousies and fierce conflicts, but all united in
a common hatred of the Moor. Though they did not yet dream of driving
him out of their land, their brave leaders, Ramiro I. and Ordono I.
had been for years steadily defying and tormenting him with the kind
of warfare to which they gave its name--_guerrilla_--meaning "little
wars."

While the Great Khalif was consolidating his Moorish kingdom and
driving the Christians back into their mountains, the power of that
people was being weakened by internal strifes existing between the
three adjacent kingdoms--Leon, Castile, and Navarre. The headship
of Leon was for years disputed by her ambitious neighbor Castile (so
called because of the numerous fortified castles with which it was
studded), under the leadership of one Fernando, Count of Castile.

There had been the usual lapse into anarchy and weakness after the
Great Khalif's death. Andalusia always needed a master, and this she
found in _Almanzor_, who was Prime Minister to one of the Khalif's
feeble descendants. It was a sad day for the struggling kingdom in the
north when this all-subduing man took the reins in his own hands, and
left his young master to amuse himself in collecting rare manuscripts
and making Cordova more beautiful.

This Almanzor, the mightiest of the soldiers of the Crescent since
Tarik and Musa, proclaimed a war of faith against the Christians, who
were obliged to forget their local dissensions and to try with their
combined strength to save their kingdom from extermination. These were
the darkest days to which they had yet been subjected. But for the
death of Almanzor the ruin of the Christian state would have been
complete. A monkish historian thus records this welcome event: "In
1002 died Almanzor, and was buried in hell."

The death of Almanzor was the turning point in the fortunes of the two
kingdoms--that of the Moors and of the Christians.

The magnificence and the glory of the kingdom faded like the mist
before the morning sun. Never again would Cordova be called the "Bride
of Andalusia." Eight ye