amented
by the whole kingdom, after a reign of fifteen years, A.D. 1423, Heg.
927.

After the death of Joseph the state was distracted by civil wars.
Mohammed X. Abenazar, or the _Left-handed_, the son and successor of
that benevolent king, was banished from the throne by Mohammed XI. _El
Zugair_, or the Little, who preserved his ill-gotten power but two
years. The Abencerrages, a powerful tribe[16] at Grenada,
re-established Mohammed the Left-handed in his former place, and his
competitor perished on the scaffold.

About four years after the death of Joseph, the Spaniards renewed their
inroads into Grenada, and carried fire and sword to the very gates of
the capital. All the neighbouring fields were devastated; the crops
were burned and the {179} villages destroyed. John II., who then
reigned in Castile, wishing to add to the miseries he had already
occasioned these unhappy people the still greater misfortune of civil
war, instigated the proclamation at Grenada of a certain Joseph
Alliamar, a grandson of that Mohammed the Red so basely assassinated at
Seville by Peter the Cruel.

All the discontented spirits in the kingdom joined the faction of
Joseph Alhamar; and the Zegris, a powerful tribe, who were at enmity
with the Abencerrages, lent their aid to the usurper. Mohammed
Abenazar was again driven from the capital, A.D. 1432, Heg. 836, and
Joseph IV. Alhamar possessed his dominions six months. At the
termination of that time he expired.

Mohammed the Left-handed once more resumed his royal seat; but, after
thirteen years of misfortune, this unhappy prince was again deposed for
the third time, and imprisoned by one of his nephews, named Mohammed
XII. the Osmin, who was himself afterward dethroned[17] by his own
brother Ismael, and ended his days {180} in the same dungeon in which
his uncle Mohammed Abenazar had languished.

All these revolutions did not prevent the Christian and Moorish
governors who commanded on their respective frontiers from making
incessant irruptions into the enemy's country. Sometimes a little
troop of cavalry or infantry surprised a village, massacred the
inhabitants, pillaged their houses, and carried away their flocks.
Sometimes an army suddenly appeared in a fertile plain, devastated the
fields, uprooted the vines, felled the trees, besieged and took some
town or fortress, and retired with their booty. This kind of warfare
was ruinous, most of all, to the unfortunate cultivator