[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]

My conversation with the Moor in the Court of
Lions, set me to musing on the singular fate of
Boabdil. Never was surname more applicable
than that bestowed upon him by his subjects, of
“el Zogoybi,” or “the unlucky.” His misfortunes
began almost in his cradle. In his tender youth,
he was imprisoned and menaced with death by an
inhuman father, and only escaped through a
mother's strategem; in after years his life was
imbittered and repeatedly endangered, by the
hostilities of a usurping uncle; his reign was distracted
by external invasions and internal feuds:
he was alternately the foe, the prisoner, the friend,
and always the dupe of Ferdinand, until conquered
and dethroned by the mingled craft and
force of that perfidious monarch. An exile from
his native land, he took refuge with one of the
princes of Africa, and fell obscurely in battle,
fighting in the cause of a stranger. His misfortunes
ceased not with his death. If Boabdil
cherished a desire to leave an honourable name

[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]

on the historic page, how cruelly has he been
defrauded of his hopes! Who is there that has
turned the least attention to the romantic history
of the Moorish domination in Spain, without
kindling with indignation at the alleged atrocities
of Boabdil? Who has not been touched with the
woes of his lovely and gentle queen, subjected by
him to a trial of life and death, on a false charge
of infidelity? Who has not been shocked by his
alleged murder of his sister and her two children,
in a transport of passion? Who has not felt his
blood boil, at the inhuman massacre of the gallant
Abencerrages, thirty-six of whom, it is affirmed,
he ordered to be beheaded in the Court of Lions?
All these charges have been reiterated in various
forms; they have passed into ballads, dramas, and
romances, until they have taken too thorough
possession of the public mind to be eradicated.
There is not a foreigner of education that visits
the Alhambra, but asks for the fountain where
the Abencerrages were beheaded; and gazes with
horror at the grated gallery where the queen is
said to have been confined; not a peasant of the
Vega or the Sierra, but sings the story in rude
couplets, to the accompaniment of his guitar,
while his hearers learn to execrate the very name
of Boabdil.

[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]

Never, however, was name more foully and
unjustly slandered. I have examined all the
authentic chronicles and letters written by Spanish
authors, contemporary with Boabdil; some of
whom were in the confidence of the catholic sovereigns,
and actually present in the camp throughout
the war. I have examined all the Arabian
authorities I could get access to, through the
medium of translation, and can find nothing to
justify these dark and hateful accusations. The
whole of these tales may be traced to a work
commonly called “The Civil Wars of Granada,”
containing a pretended history of the feuds of the
Zegries and Abencerrages, during the last struggle
of the Moorish empire. The work appeared originally
in Spanish, and professed to be translated
from the Arabic by one Gines Perez de Hita,
an inhabitant of Murcia. It has since passed into
various languages, and Florian has taken from it
much of the fable of his Gonsalvo of Cordova;
it has thus, in a great measure, usurped the authority
of real history, and is currently believed by
the people, and especially the peasantry of Granada.
The whole of it, however, is a mass of
fiction, mingled with a few disfigured truths, which
give it an air of veracity. It bears internal
evidence of its falsity; the manners and customs

[figure description] Page 107.[end figure description]

of the Moors being extravagantly misrepresented
in it, and scenes depicted totally incompatible
with their habits and their faith, and which never
could have been recorded by a Mahometan
writer.

I confess there seems to me something almost
criminal, in the wilful perversions of this work:
great latitude is undoubtedly to be allowed to romantic
fiction, but there are limits which it must
not pass, and the names of the distinguished dead,
which belong to history, are no more to be calumniated
than those of the illustrious living. One
would have thought too, that the unfortunate Boabdil
had suffered enough for his justifiable hostility
to the Spaniards, by being stript of his kingdom,
without having his name thus wantonly traduced,
and rendered a by-word and a theme of infamy
in his native land, and in the very mansion
of his fathers!

It is not intended hereby to affirm that the
transactions imputed to Boabdil, are totally without
historic foundation; but as far as they can be
traced, they appear to have been the acts of his
father, Aben Hassan, who is represented by both
Christian and Arabian chroniclers, as being of a
cruel and ferocious nature. It was he who put to
death the cavaliers of the illustrious line of the Aben

[figure description] Page 108.[end figure description]

cerrages, upon suspicion of their being engaged
in a conspiracy to dispossess him of his throne.

The story of the accusation of the queen of Boabdil,
and of her confinement in one of the towers,
may also be traced to an incident in the life of his
tiger-hearted father. Aben Hassen, in his advanced
age, married a beautiful Christian captive of noble
descent, who took the Moorish appellation of Zorayda,
by whom he had two sons. She was of an
ambitious spirit and anxious that her children
should succeed to the crown. For this purpose she
worked upon the suspicious temper of the king; inflaming
him with jealousies of his children by his
other wives and concubines, whom she accused of
plotting against his throne and life. Some of
them were slain by the ferocious father. Ayxa
Ia Horra, the virtuous mother of Boabdil, who
had once been the cherished favourite of the
tyrant, became likewise the object of his suspicion.
He confined her and her son in the
tower of Comares, and would have sacrificed
Boabdil to his fury, but that his mother lowered
him from the tower, in the night, by means of the
scarfs of herself and her attendants, and thus enabled
him to escape to Guadix.

Such is the only shadow of a foundation that I
can find for the story of the accused and captive

[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]

queen; and in this it appears that Boabdil was
the persecuted, instead of the persecutor.

Throughout the whole of his brief, turbulent,
and disastrous reign, Boabdil gives evidence of a
mild and amiable character. He, in the first instance,
won the hearts of the people by his affable
and gracious manners; he was always placable,
and never inflicted any severity of punishment
upon those who occasionally rebelled against him.
He was personally brave, but he wanted moral
courage; and, in times of difficulty and perplexity,
was wavering and irresolute. This feebleness of
spirit hastened his downfall, while it deprived him
of that heroic grace which would have given a
grandeur and dignity to his fate, and rendered him
worthy of closing the splendid drama of the Mosem
domination in Spain.

p226-113

Previous section

Next section