Leo Africanus Read Online Free PDF

Alhama, Ronda, Marbella, Malaga, and so many other places, and as long as peace is not restored, the list will continue to increase; the orchards have been laid waste by the troops, and the peasants complain; the roads are no longer safe, the merchants cannot lay in their stocks, the
qaisariyya
and the suqs are empty, and the price of foodstuffs is rising, except that of meat, which is being sold at one dirham the pound, because thousands of animals have been slaughtered to prevent them being carried off by the enemy; Boabdil should do everything to silence the warmongers and reach a lasting peace with Castile, before Granada itself falls under siege.
    â€˜Those who wanted war said: The enemy has decided once and for all to annihilate us, and it is not by submitting that we will forcethem to withdraw. See how the people of Malaga have been forced into slavery after their surrender! See how the Inquisition has raised pyres for the Jews of Seville, of Saragossa, of Valencia, of Teruel, of Toledo! Tomorrow the pyres will be raised in Granada, not just for the people of the Sabbath but for the Muslims as well! How can we stop this, except by resistance, mobilization, and
jihad
? Each time we have fought with a will, we have managed to check the advance of the Castilians, but after our victories traitors appear among us, who seek only to conciliate the enemy of God, pay him tribute, and open the gates of our cities to him. Has Boabdil himself not promised one day to hand over Granada to Ferdinand? It is more than three years since he signed a document to that effect at Loja. This sultan is a traitor, he must be replaced by a true Muslim who is determined to wage the holy war and to restore confidence to our army.
    â€˜It would have been difficult to find a soldier, an officer, the commander of a platoon of ten, or of a hundred or of a thousand, still less a man of religion, a qadi, a lawyer, an ‘alim or the imam of a mosque who would not share the latter point of view, while the merchants and cultivators for the most part opted for peace. The court of Boabdil was itself divided. Left to himself, Boabdil would have made any truce at whatever price, because he was born a vassal and did not hope to do more than die as one; but he could not ignore the inclinations of his army, which regarded the heroic forays made by the other princes of the Nasrid house with ill-concealed impatience.
    â€˜A particularly telling example was always mentioned by the war party: that of Basta, a Muslim city to the east of Granada, encircled and bombarded by the Rumis for more than five months. The Christian kings – may the Most High demolish what they have built, and rebuild what they have demolished – had raised wooden towers which faced the outer walls and dug a ditch to prevent the inhabitants of the besieged city from communicating with the outside world. However, in spite of their overwhelming superiority in numbers and armaments, and in spite of the presence of Ferdinand himself, the Castilians were unable to prevail against the town, and the garrison was able to make bloody raids each night. Thus the relentless resistance of the defenders of Basta, commanded by the Nasrid amir Yahya al-Najjar, excited the passions of the people of Granada and inflamed their imagination.
    â€˜Boabdil was not particularly pleased at this, because Yahya, thehero of Basta, was one of his most bitter enemies. He even laid claim to the throne of Granada, which his grandfather had once occupied, and considered the present sultan a usurper.’
    â€˜The very evening before New Year’s Day, a new exploit of the defenders of Basta reached the ears of the people of Granada. The Castilians, it was said, had got wind of the fact that foodstuffs were beginning to be in short supply in Basta. To persuade them that the opposite was the case, Yahya had devised a form of deception: to collect together all the remaining provisions, to display them