After the fall of Toledo, Seville had increased in power. The sovereigns of that city were also masters of ancient Cordova, and possessed, in addition, Estremadura and a part of Portugal. Benabad, king of Seville, one of the most estimable princes of his age, was now the only one of its enemies capable of disturbing the safety of Castile. Alphonso IV., desirous of allying himself with this powerful Moor, demanded his daughter in marriage. His proposal was acceded to, and the Castilian monarch received several towns as the dowry of the Moorish princess; but this extraordinary union, which seemed to ensure peace between the two nations, nevertheless soon became either the cause or the pretext of renewed contests.
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Africa, after having been separated from the vast empire of the Caliphs of the East by the Fatimite caliphs, and being, during three centuries of civil war, the prey of a succession of conquerors more ferocious and sanguinary than the lions of their deserts,[3] was now subjected to the family of the Almoravides, a powerful tribe of Egyptian origin. Joseph-ben-Tessefin, the second prince of this dynasty, founded the kingdom and city of Morocco.
Endowed with some warlike talents, proud of his power, and burning to augment it, Joseph regarded with a covetous eye the beautiful European provinces which had formerly been conquered by the Mussulmans of Africa.
Some historians assert that the King of Castile, Alphonso IV., and his father-in-law Benabad, king of Seville, having formed the project of dividing Spain between them, committed the capital error of summoning the Moors of Africa to their assistance in this grand design. But others, founding their assertions upon more plausible reasoning, say that the petty Mussulman kings, who were the neighbours or tributaries of Benabad, justly alarmed at his alliance with a {93} Christian king, solicited the support of the Almoravide.
But, be that as it may, the ambitious Joseph eagerly availed himself of the fortunate pretext presented by the invitation he had received, and crossed the Mediterranean at the head of an army. He hastened to attack Alphonso, and succeeded in overcoming him in a battle that took place between them, A.D. 1097, Heg. 490. Then turning his arms against Benabad, Joseph took Cordova, besieged Seville, and was preparing for the assault of that city, when the virtuous Benabad, sacrificing his crown and even his liberty to save his subjects from the horrors that threatened them, delivered himself up, together with his family of a hundred children, to the disposal of the Almoravide.
The barbarous African, dreading the influence of a monarch whose virtues had rendered him so justly dear to his people, sent him to end his days in an African prison, where his daughters were obliged to support their father and brothers by the labour of their hands.
The unfortunate Benabad lived six years after the commencement of his imprisonment, regretting his lost throne only for the sake of his {94} people, and beguiling the period of his protracted leisure by the composition of several poems which are still in existence. In them he attempts to console his daughters under their heavy afflictions, recalls the remembrance of his vanished greatness, and offers himself as a warning and example to kings who shall presume to trust too confidently to the unchanging continuance of the favours of fortune.
Joseph-ben-Tessefin, after he had thus become master of Seville and Cordova, soon succeeded in subjugating the other petty Mussulman states; and the Moors, united under a single monarch as powerful as Joseph, threatened again to occupy the important position they had sustained during the supremacy of their caliphs. The Spanish princes, alarmed at this prospect, suspended their individual quarrels, and joined Alphonso in resisting the Africans.
At this particular juncture, a fanatical love of religion and glory induced many European warriors to take up arms against the infidels. Raymond of Bourgogne, and his kinsman Henry, both French princes of the blood, Raymond of Saint-Gilles, count of Toulouse, with some other cavaliers from among their vassals, crossed the {95} Pyrenees with their retainers, and fought under the banners of the King of Castile. Thus assisted, that sovereign put the Egyptian commander to flight, and compelled him, soon afterward, to recross the Mediterranean.