To this day the key of the great
Mosque at Cordoba is preserved at Rabat as a sacred relic of former dignity
and power--a symbol to the Moslem of his perpetual banishment. If Cordoba
with its mosque--still one of the wonders of the world, with its eleven
hundred marble columns--were the principal shrine and holy of holies to
these people, there were in addition hundreds of other temples of their
faith now for ever desecrated in their eyes by the misfortune which had
placed them in Christian hands. In Andalusia were the dishonoured graves of
their kinsfolk, and, last and worst of all, in this land still dwelt
thousands upon thousands of their co-religionists held in a degrading
bondage by their implacable enemies.

The capture of Algiers by Count Pedro Navarro was a crowning misfortune for
the exiles, and when this commander seized upon the place he extracted from
the inhabitants an oath of fidelity to the Spanish crown; he further
erected a strong tower to overawe the town, and to keep its turbulent
inhabitants in order. But such an oath as this, extracted at the point of
the sword, was writ in water; it meant, of course, the suppression of
piracy, and it also meant the starvation of most of those persons who dwelt
in the vicinity. How the Moslem population existed for the six years after
the incursion of Navarro is a mystery; but they probably moved their
galleys, of which they possessed some twenty, further along the coast out
of the range of the guns from Navarro's Tower, and secure from the
observation of those who held it for the Spanish king.

In the year in which Selim descended upon Egypt the King of Spain,
Ferdinand V., died, and grave troubles immediately broke out in Spain. This
was an opportunity too good to be missed, as no reinforcements could
possibly be expected for the garrison in Algiers as long as these
disturbances lasted, and the Algerines took counsel together as to the best
means of driving out their enemies. It is a commentary on the detestation
in which they held the Spaniards that they should have allied themselves
for this purpose with the savages of the hinterland. This, however, was
what they did. As in the case of Jigelli, these people could always be
relied upon to go anywhere in search of booty, and one Selim Eutemi entered
the town at the head of his tribe. But sheer, stark, savage valour could
make no impression on Navarro's Tower and the ordnance that was mounted on
its walls. The resu