Oriental Women

by Edward B. Pollard

The power of the wife of the Spanish Moor was by no means small. A fine example of her influence at times may be illustrated by the history of Muley Abul Hassan, the royal Moorish ruler of the Alhambra, who came to the throne in A.D. 1465. "Though cruel by nature," says Washington Irving, "he was prone to be ruled by his wives." He had married early in life a young kinswoman, the daughter of the Sultan Mohammed VII., his great-uncle. This Ayxa--or Ayesha, as she has been called--was, says the historian, of almost masculine spirit and energy, and of such immaculate and inaccessible virtue that she was generally called La Horra--"the Chaste." To her there was born a son, who received the name of Abu Abdallah; or as he is commonly known, by the abbreviation Boabdil. The astrologers were called upon to cast the horoscope of the infant, as was usual; and, to their great trepidation, it was found that it was "written in the book of fate that this child will one day sit upon the throne, but the downfall of the kingdom will be accomplished during his reign." At once the young prince and heir began to be looked upon with suspicion and even aversion by his father, who proceeded to persecute the child over whom such a prediction hung. He was accordingly nicknamed El Zogoybi--"the Unfortunate." It was a valiant and fond-hearted mother whose constant care and protection enabled him to grow up to young manhood; for she was a woman of strong character and of dominating will. But, alas! growing somewhat old, and losing some of her personal charm and influence, Ayesha must face a rival in the harem. Among the captives taken by the Moors at this time, says Irving, was one Isabella, the daughter of a Christian cavalier, Sancho Ximenes de Solis. Her Moorish captors gave her the name of Fatima; but as she grew up, her surpassing beauty gained her the surname of Zoraya, or "the Morning Star," by which she has become known to history. Her charms at length attracted the notice of Muley Abul Hassan, and, after being educated in the Moslem faith, she became his wife.

Zoraya soon acquired complete ascendency over the mind of Muley Abul Hassan. "She was as ambitious as she was beautiful, and, having become the mother of two sons, looked forward to the possibility of one of them sitting on the throne of Granada." Zoraya succeeded in gathering about her a faction, who were drawn to her by her foreign and Christian descent. These were anxious to assist her in her ambition and that of her sons, as they arrayed themselves against Boabdil and his mother. The latter, however, were not without their ardent supporters. There were engendered jealousies that were inveterate and hatreds that were deep. Intriguing was the order of the day. Fearing that a plot would succeed in deposing Muley Abul Hassan and in putting Boabdil upon the throne of his father, the prince, together with his mother, was thrown into prison and confined in the tower of Cimares. Hassan resolved not only to set the stars at defiance and to prove the lying fallacy of the horoscope, but to silence at once and for all, by the executioner's sword, the ambitions of his son Boabdil. But here the versatility of Ayesha again asserted itself. She at once began to make a way for Boabdil's escape. "At the dead of night she gained access to his prison, and, tying together the shawls and scarfs of herself and her female attendants, lowered him down from a balcony of the Alhambra to the steep, rocky hillside which sweeps down to the Darro. Here some of her devoted adherents were waiting to receive him, who, mounting him upon a swift horse, spirited him away." The young man, acting under the advice of ambitious friends and relatives, began to make preparations for war; and his own mother encouraged his heart and equipped him for the field, giving him her fond benediction as she lovingly girded his scimiter to his side. But his young bride wept, as she tried to fancy the ills that might befall him in so uneven a conquest. "Why dost thou weep, daughter of Ali Altar?" asked the invincible Ayesha; "these tears become not the daughter of a warrior, nor the wife of a king. Believe me, there lurks more danger for a monarch within the strong walls of a palace than within the frail curtains of a tent. It is by perils in the field that thy husband must purchase security on his throne." But Morayma, daughter of Ali Altar, found it hard to be comforted; and as her husband, the prince, departed from the Alhambra, she took her place at her mirador, and then, overlooking the Vega, she watched the departing loved one, whom she thought never to see again, as his forces vanished from her sight, and "every burst of warlike melody that came swelling on the breeze was answered by a gush of sorrow."

This succession of fateful incidents connected with the career of one who was destined to be the last to sit upon a Moorish throne in Spain is here recounted because the events give at once an insight into the strength and the weakness of the Moorish womanly character, with all its ardent love and spiteful hate, with its loyalty and its trickery, its hopes and its fears.

It was Ferdinand, with his wife Isabella, who was destined to return to the Spaniards the possession of their land, so long held by the Moors. The story of the overthrow of Boabdil is a narrative of chivalry and real pathos. Boabdil, standing on a spur of the Alpuxarras, with his mother Ayesha by his side, looked back upon the glory of his lost dominion. The towers of the Alhambra loomed up before him, and the rich and fertile Vega stretched out before his eyes for the last time. "Allahu Akbar," said he, sorrowfully, "God is most great," and burst into tears. "Well may you weep like a woman," said Ayesha, "for that which you were unable to defend like a man." This final standing place of the last of the Moorish rulers in Spain is still known as El Ultimo Sospiro del Moro--"the last sigh of the Moor." The standard of Castile and Aragon by the side of the Cross has supplanted the crescent of Islam; and Ferdinand, with Isabella, knelt in the Alhambra and gave thanks to God, while the Spanish army knelt behind them, and the royal choir chanted a Te Deum. Had Isabella been more gracious and kept faith with the infidel, the lot of the vanquished had been less sorrowful.

When the Moors were driven out from the home that had been theirs for more than seven eventful centuries, none suffered more than did the proud Moorish ladies. It is creditable, however, to their Spanish victors that they preserved as a part of their own national literature many of the ballads of the vanquished Moors. Lines from the Moorish Lament for the Slain Celin are expressive of the wail of maid and mother at the loss of their former glory and their expulsion from the place they had so long held:

"The Mooress at the lattice stands--the Moor stands at the door

One maid is wringing of her hands and one is weeping sore.

Down to the dust men bore their heads, and ashes black they strew

Upon their broidered garments of crimson, green and blue."

The aged women also had their hopes stricken low by the downfall of their people: