Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/432

Granada, ■288 THE SPANISH ARABS, PART gave a permanent ascendency to the Christian '. arms. The vigorous campaigns of James the First, of Aragon, and of St. Ferdinand, of Castile, gradu- ally stripped away the remaining territories of Va- lencia, Murcia, and Andalusia ; so that, by the middle of the thirteenth century, the constantly contracting circle of the Moorish dominion had shrunk into the narrow limits of the province of Granada. Yet on this comparatively small point of their ancient domain, the Saracens erected a new kingdom of sufficient strength to resist, for more than two centuries, the united forces of the Spanish monarchies. Kingdom of Thc Moorish territory of Granada contained, within a circuit of about one hundred and eighty leagues, all the physical resources of a great empire. Its broad valleys were intersected by mountains rich in mineral wealth, whose hardy population supplied the state with husbandmen and soldiers. Its pastures were fed by abundant fountains, and its coasts studded with commodious ports, the prin- cipal marts in the Mediterranean. In the midst, and crowning the whole, as with a diadem, rose the beautiful city of Granada. In the days of the Moors it was encompassed by a wall, flanked by a thousand and thirty towers, with seven portals. ^^ Its population, according to a contemporary, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, amount- ed to two hundred thousand souls ;-^ and various 22 Garibay, Compendio, lib. 39, 23 Zurita, Anales, lib. 20, cap. cap, .3. 42,