Dogs of God

by James Reston Jr

  In the succeeding months, Muley Aben Hassan came twice to the citadel to try to reclaim it, but twice he was turned away. In Granada, his people turned on him for this disaster. “Accursed be the day that you lit the flame of war in our land!” wailed one protester. “May the holy Prophet bear witness before Allah that we and our children are innocent of this act! Upon your head, and upon the heads of your children until the end of the world will rest the sin of Zahara!” Ay di mi Alhama became the wail in the street. “Woe is me, Alhama.” And this lamentation would be put into Moorish verse. Centuries later, Lord Byron translated it into English.

  Letters to the monarch tell

  How Alhama’s city fell;

  In the fire the scroll he threw

  And the messenger he slew

  Woe is me, Alhama…

  And once again the hoary figure of the prophetic old anchorite named Alfaqui figures in the epic poem.

  Out then spake an aged Moor

  In these words the king before:

  “Wherefore call on us, oh King?

  What may mean this gathering?“

  Woe is me, Alhama!

  “Friends! Ye have, alas! To know

  Of a most disastrous blow,

  That Christians, stern and bold,

  Have obtain’d Alahama’s hold.“

  Woe is me, Alhama!

  Out then spake old Alfaqui

  With his beard so white to see

  “Good King, thou are justly served,

  Good King, this thou hast deserved.“

  Woe is me, Alhama!

  The last Spanish crusade had begun.

  In the spring of 1483, Pope Sixtus IV made the crusade official. He issued a papal bull sanctioning and sanctifying the resumption of the War of Spanish Reconquest. Presented to Ferdinand and Isabella by the papal nuncio at the Monastery of Santo Domingo al Real de Madrid, with the Cardinal of Spain and other dignitaries in attendance, the bull levied a financial obligation on the hierarchy of the Church and of the military to finance the endeavor and promised sweeping indulgences to those who participated. Taking up the crusade was made a religious duty, even if one’s effort was merely to raise money for the expensive war ahead. The call to crusade was published and distributed widely throughout the realm, a task made much easier and much quicker now since the printing process had been invented in Germany a few years before.

  Meanwhile, in the province of Granada, the last enclave of Islam in Western Europe, the internal strains were great. Dissension against the tyrannical and brutal sultan, Muley Aben Hassan, had boiled to the surface. That he had put his kingdom at great risk by his strike against Zahara was broadly deplored. The loss of Alhama was devastating. The prophetic words of the aged anchorite hung in the air. As the sultan returned empty-handed from his unsuccessful attempts to recapture Alhama, the disenchantment increased, and a conspiracy against the Moorish king was organized within the Alhambra.

  When Muley retreated to his country palace at Alixares, the rebels seized the Alhambra and the neighborhood on the hill across from it called Albaicín. Upon the sultan’s return from the country, the gates of the fortress were shut tight against him. From the parapets, the rebels shouted down that the king was deposed, and his son, Abdullah Muhammad, known as Boabdil, was installed in Muley’s place.

  “Alihu Akbar!” the king is said to have exclaimed. “It is pointless to combat what is written in the book of fate. It is predicted that my son should sit upon the throne of Granada. God forbid that the rest of the prediction come true.” With that, Muley retreated north to the city of Baza to organize his supporters. “This rash flame will burn itself out,” he proclaimed confidently. “In time the situation will cool off and the people will listen to reason.”

  But the people of Granada showed no signs of returning their allegiance to him. In desperation, Muley staged a disastrous raid on the Alhambra. Five hundred of his best soldiers succeeded in scaling the walls and entering the fortress, and a terrible fight through the streets of the Alhambra and the gardens of the Generalife ensued. After much bloodshed, Muley’s men were eventually turned back, and the old tyrant retreated south to Málaga, where his younger brother, Muley Abdullah, known as “El Zagal—the Valiant,” reigned.

  And so as the Christian crusade marshaled its forces for an organized campaign against the last Moorish state, the Moors themselves were divided into two warring camps, father against son, Granada against Málaga.

  Flushed with the success at Alhama, King Ferdinand called a council of war in Córdoba to ponder his next move. Throughout the land, spurred by the papal bull making the crusade a pious obligation, provisions of foodstuffs and wine were requisitioned. From the Santa Hermandad thousands more cavalry and foot soldiers were pressed into duty for the growing army of invasion. Lest the Moors receive substantial reinforcements from the Muslim lands of North Africa, Ferdinand strengthened his armada in the Straits of Gibraltar, a task made easier by the fact that the Rock itself had passed into Christian hands twenty years earlier, in 1462. Before the king’s councilors lay the question of what to do about the prize of Alhama, exposed and deep within the enemy territory as it was. Among the seasoned warriors sentiment was strong to level the place, so that the Moors might not recapture a strategic stronghold. Against this faction Queen Isabella spoke out forcefully.

  “Shall we destroy the first fruits of our victories?” she demanded to know. “Shall we abandon the first place we wrest from the Moors? Perish the thought. It would give succor to the enemy, and cast our councils as feeble. You speak of the toil and expense of maintaining Alhama. Did any doubt, on undertaking this war, that it would involve infinite cost, labor, and bloodshed? Shall we shrink from the cost, in this moment of gaining our first glorious trophy?”

  Grumbles were heard around the room, but the queen dismissed the naysayers curtly. “Let us hear no more about the destruction of Alhama,” she said with finality. “Its walls are sacred. It is a stronghold granted to us by Heaven, in the center of this land of infidels. Let us only concern ourselves with how to extend our conquest and capture more cities.”

  With that, orders to reinforce the fortress were issued.

  Casting his eye over the map, King Ferdinand now focused on the stronghold of Loja, a prosperous town a few leagues northwest of Alhama, astride the main east-west road of the caliphate, and defended by an alcazar that dated back to the ninth century. If the Christian Holy War could wrest it from the Moors, the gateway to the rich plain around Granada itself would be thrown open.

  Ferdinand was eager to get started, since he had missed out on the glorious triumph of Alhama, for which the marquis of Cádiz was being lionized. But the marquis now urged caution; until the army could be provisioned, and more reinforcements of the Holy Brotherhood brought in from the north, they should wait. To attack now would be foolhardy. The royal army consisted of a mere five thousand cavalry and eight thousand foot soldiers, scarcely enough to capture and hold well-defended castles or to defeat the fierce army of the Moors. Moreover, the Moors were strengthening their forces.

  Despite the objections of his commanders, Ferdinand, full of zeal and itching for glory, ordered his army to march. Within a few days, in late winter of 1483, he stood before Loja. Its circumstance was not advantageous to the attackers. The town was situated where the Genil River narrows into a deep gorge and passes between two large, rocky hills. Olive groves covered the broken hills, which were scored and striated by a series of deep ravines. The landscape provided no natural place for the whole army to camp, nor for the artillery to be effectively positioned, nor for the cavalry to gather. Across the gorge, the fortress was well defended, and under the command of a stalwart fighter, Ali Atar. This fierce Moor was the father-in-law of Boabdil. Despite his ninety years of age, he was described as “fiery in his passion, sinewy and powerful in his frame,” and he had terrorized the Christian border towns for decades. Now, he would prove himself to be a formidable foe. As he watched the disjoint
ed movements of the Christian army across the river from the crenellated walls of his fortress, the canny old Moor remarked, “With the help of Allah, I will give those strutting caballeros a good stirring up.”

  Across the Genil River was a single bridge, and above it to the north was the imposing, steep massif known as the Albohacen. Since the terrain was unsuited to cavalry action, the king ordered the marquis of Cádiz to seize the high ground, which he did. Once Albohacen was in Christian hands, however, it was hard to know what to do with it. Ali Atar knew, however. Under cover of darkness, his troops stole across the bridge and set an ambush. The following morning, the old warrior and his men raced across the bridge, flags flying and scimitars raised, shouting the praises of Allah in an apparent attack on the hill. The Christians, thinking they had an easy prey, raced down the hill to engage the enemy. Ali Atar then wheeled his soldiers around in an apparent retreat and rout, and the Christians galloped heroically into the trap. It was an old trick of Muslim battle tactics, and the result was mayhem on Albohacen, with important knights lost on the Christian side.

  King Ferdinand fared little better the following day. It was gradually dawning on him that his destiny as the liberator of Andalusia might be more difficult than he imagined. To make things worse for Ferdinand, word came that Moorish reinforcements, led by the king of the Moors, Muley Aben Hassan himself, were coming from the south. Realizing that the marquis of Cádiz had been right about the insufficiency of his forces, Ferdinand ordered a retreat. When he saw the Christians strike their tents and the Christian soldiers move out, Ali Atar sallied forth once again, disrupting the Christian lines and throwing the retreat into chaos. At one point, King Ferdinand found himself surrounded. He was saved only by the quick thinking of the marquis of Cádiz, who charged in with seventy cavalrymen to beat back the Muslims.

  Leaving its heavy baggage behind, the Christian army fled seven leagues to the west until it reached an outcropping known as the Rock of the Lovers. All along the way, Ali Atar harassed this disorganized retreat mercilessly. At the Río Frio, the old Moor watched the Christian army scatter and bid it good riddance. Muley Aben Hassan arrived a short time later with his army. Upon his arrival, too late to finish the job, Muley lamented the lost opportunity. “They have come and gone like a summer cloud,” he is supposed to have remarked. “All their boasting has been mere empty thunder.” Not content to leave the matter there, the Moorish king marched to Alhama once again. But there he found the bastion defended by an even stronger garrison.

  The month of March 1483 saw the conflict become a game of thrust and parry, with booty rather than religious conquest its main purpose. The Moors got the best of it. Muley Aben Hassan launched a raid, by way of Gibraltar, deep into the lands of Rodrigo Ponce de León and of the count of Medina-Sidonia, and returned to Málaga laden with Christian spoil. In retaliation, the Christian lords attacked the hamlets and villages in the rugged terrain of the Axarquia west of Málaga which they thought would be easy picking. But the combined forces of Muley Aben Hassan and his brother, El Zagal the Valiant, fell upon the exposed Christian army in an open valley and crushed it. The remnants fled into the low hills, where another Moorish contingent waited in hiding. In this total rout the cream of Andalusian nobility was decimated. Eight hundred knights were killed, and fifteen hundred were taken captive. The site of the battle would forever be known as la Cuesta de la Matanza—the Hill of the Massacre.

  For this brief period, the land of Spanish Islam seemed safe, even transcendent. Bedraggled Christian captives were paraded in Málaga, while the bloodied survivors of the rout in the Axarquia, including the marquis of Cádiz, trickled into the Christian border towns. “A great affliction has overwhelmed all Andalusia,” a Christian chronicler wrote. “There was no drying the eyes which wept for her.” Other scribes drew broader, sharper lessons. “Our Lord consented to it because most of those people went with robbery in their hearts rather than to serve God,” said the historian of the royal court. Of the Christian disaster west of Málaga, another wrote:

  “It was intended as a lesson to their overconfidence and vain-glory. They overrated their own prowess, and thought that so chosen a band of chivalry had but to appear in the land of the enemy and conquer. It was to teach them that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that God alone giveth the victory.”

  When, in the night sky over Al Andalus, a brilliant crescent moon, symbol of Islam, rose, it seemed to many to be the smile of the Prophet.

  With the rousing success of Muley Aben Hassan and his brother, El Zagal, their stock rose rapidly among the people throughout the land of the Moors. The standing of Muley’s eldest son, Boabdil El Chico (The Small), dropped proportionately, as stories of his sloth, his love of luxury, his preoccupation with trivial games and festivals made the rounds of Granada’s streets. Now in his twenties, Boabdil had never been tested in battle. If he was to retain the respect of his people and the crown of his father, he needed to sally forth. His father-in-law was the indomitable Ali Atar, the lord and hero of Loja, and this fierce old warrior pressed the point with his son-in-law.

  Seemingly forever, Ali Atar had run free through the borderlands of Christian Andalusia, foraging and harrowing and ravaging at will. His parties struck terror in the border towns, and his spies were constantly on the alert for new opportunities. They told him now that the Christian town of Lucena, on the road to Córdoba, was weakly defended and easily taken. When the old Moor put the idea to Boabdil, it appealed; and he soon mustered a force of nine thousand foot soldiers and eight hundred cavalry.

  The day of Boabdil’s departure from the Alhambra, April 20, 1483, was exactly a month after his father’s victory over the Christians west of Málaga. It would later go into lore that his wife, Morayama, hung upon the young king’s neck weeping and pleading with him not to go. To this shameful display, Boabdil’s mother, Ayxa the Chaste, gave a sharp rebuke. “Why dost thou weep, daughter of Ali Atar? These tears do not become the daughter of a warrior, much less the wife of a king. More danger lurks within the walls of this palace than the curtains of a war tent. By prowess upon the battlefield, your husband must purchase the security of his throne.”

  Out of the Alhambra El Chico rode magnificently, astride a massive white charger richly and colorfully caparisoned, armed with shining lance and scimitar. As he passed through the Arch of Elvira, he playfully struck his lance against the arch stone, and broke its blade. At this bad omen, his commanders blanched, but Boabdil rode on undeterred. Their worries deepened a day later when a fox raced wildly through the ranks, even close to the monarch himself, and eluded all the arrows and darts of the king’s soldiers. It was a second portent. A vizier suggested that they turn back, but El Chico waved the man aside.

  At Loja, Ali Atar joined his son-in-law, and the colorful column moved eagerly across the bridge and past Albohacen, the scene of so recent a Moorish triumph. The procession moved over the frontier at night toward Lucena, hoping to avoid detection. But alarm fires soon blazed across the hilltops, and the Moors knew that there would be no surprise. The first to receive the news of the enemy incursion was the count of Cabra, whose strong fortress lay only a few leagues north of Lucena. More than 1,000 well-trained fighters and 250 experienced and battle-hardened caballeros were under the command of the count. Unfurling his family’s standard, whose symbol was a goat, the count and his contingent moved out with dispatch to reinforce the weak garrison of Lucena.

  At daybreak, fog covering the hills and ravines around Lucena, El Chico sent a demand to the town to surrender. As they waited for a reply, the Moors fanned out in the countryside to gather up herds of cattle and casks of the famous Montilla wine. While they foraged, the Christian spies observed their movements carefully. In the early morning it was reported to the count that the main force of the Moors was then in a nearby arroyo.

  With the mist covering the valleys and hills, the count of Cabra decided that he should not wait for further reinforcements.
He must seize this opportunity. To his soldiers he invoked the spirit of Santiago, St. James the Moorslayer, who in the sacred ninth-century Battle of Clavijo had come out of the heavens to aid the Christians and had personally slain ten thousand Moors. This legend had great currency with the Christian forces now. They were to march, confident of divine inspiration, secure in their belief that the benevolence of the Virgin Mary would enfold and protect them.

  “Santiago!” was the battle cry, and it would soon be mixed in the din of war with “Allah Akbar!—God is Great,” as the Christian force came upon the Moors resting in the deep valley. As the Christian army fell upon the Moors, mass confusion reigned. Ali Atar spied the Christian banner through the mist and mistook Cabra’s goat for a dog, which was the symbol of the strong Christian bastions of Baeza and Úbeda. “All Andalusia is in movement against you,” Ali Atar shouted in alarm to El Chico. “I advise you to retire.” And then the old warrior heard a trumpet, sounded by the single Italian in the Christian ranks. Ali Atar knew that sound well as the signature of the much-feared soldiers of Lombardy. “The whole world is against you!” Ali Atar screamed at his king.