THE EMPIRE OF "THE TWO SHORES" 53 Ummeyah were broken up into petty provinces, thus giving an opportunity to the cruel enemy of God to attack in detail the divided Moslems, and to expel them at last from those countries which they had so long held in their power." Alfonso VI. took Toledo in 1081. In the following year Al Mutammed, the Arab king of Seville, refused to pay him tribute, and Alfonso swore to drive the Arabs into the sea at Gibraltar. In this extremity Al Mutammed looked across the straits for help, and Africa once more intervened directly in the affairs of Spain.

To understand the position which had been reached in Africa, it is necessary to go back for a few years. It has been mentioned that of the two main roads by which communication between Negroland and Northern Africa was maintained, one lay across the western deserts in a direction almost due south of the territory now known as Morocco. The consequence of many wars in Northern Africa had been to force down certain Berber tribes upon the western confines of Negroland. *' From time immemorial," says Ibn Khaldun, " the Molet-themim (or Wearers of the Veil) had been in the Sandy Desert. As brave as they were wild, they had never bowed under a foreign yoke. Having increased their numbers in the vast plains of the desert, they formed several tribes — the Goddala, the Lemtunah, the Messonfah, the Outzila, the Tuareg, the Zegowah, and the Lamta. These people were all brothers of the Senajah, who lived between the Atlantic and Ghadames," that is, in the western half of Northern Africa.

The Lemtunah were already a powerful nation obeying hereditary kings when the Ommeyade dynasty reigned in Spain, and the western portion of the desert over which they ruled was known as the ** Desert Empire.*' At that time also the Negro nations of the West were very powerful, but at a later period, after the Lemtunahs had subdued the lesser tribes, the Western kingdom of the Negroes began to decay. The Lemtunah made war upon them and forced them partially to accept Islam. Under Tiloutan, a