ost four hundred years, the Christians were about to recover
their land.

The Moors, thoroughly frightened, realizing how helpless they had
grown, resolved upon a desperate measure.

There was, on the opposite African coast, a sect of Berber fanatics,
fierce and devout, known as "saints," but which the Moors called
_Almoravides_. Fighting for the faith was their occupation. What more
fitting than to use them as a means of driving the infidel Christians
out of Moslem territory!

They came, like a cloud of locusts, and settled upon the land. Yusuf,
their general, led his men against Alfonso's Castilians October 23,
1086. Near Badajos the attack was made simultaneously in front and
rear, crushing them utterly; Alfonso barely escaping with five hundred
men. This was only the first of many other crushing defeats; the most
disheartening of which was the one in 1099, when the Cid, fighting in
alliance with Pedro, King of Aragon, was defeated near Gardia, on the
seacoast. Then the great warrior's heart broke, and he died; and we
are told he was clothed cap-a-pie in shining armor and placed upright
on his good steed Bavieca, his trusty sword in his hand--and so he
passed to his burial; his banner borne and guarded by five hundred
knights. And we are also told the Moors wonderingly watched his
departure with his knights, not suspecting that he was dead.

The object of the Moors in inviting the odious Almoravides had been
accomplished; the Christians had been driven out of Andalusia back
into their own territory; but their African auxiliaries were too well
pleased with their new abode to think of leaving it. One by one the
Moorish Princes were subdued by the men whose aid they had invoked,
until a dynasty of the Almoravides was fastened upon Spain. To the
refined Spanish Arabs contact with these savages from the desert was
a terrible scourge, and so far as they were able they withdrew into
communities by themselves, leaving these African locusts to devour
their substance and dim their glory.

But luxury was not favorable to the invaders. In another generation
their martial spirit was gone and they had become only ignorant,
sodden voluptuaries; and when the Christians once more renewed their
attacks, they failed to repel them as Yusuf had done thirty years
before.

There was another fanatical sect, beyond the Atlas range in Africa,
which had long been looking for a coming Messiah, whom they called the
_Mahdi_. They were kno