AFRICAN RULE IN SPAIN 63 under the African dynasties which administered it for nearly two hundred years, must have been extraordinarily prosperous.

We may add to Ash-shakandi's account a statement of Ibn Said, made also in the thirteenth century, that in his day Andalusia was " so thickly populated that if a traveller goes any distance through it he will find at every step on his road hamlets, farms, towns, orchards, and cultivated fields, and will never meet, as is more or less the case in other cultivated countries, with large tracts of uncultivated land or desert. This, united to the habit of the Andalusians, who, instead of living together as the Egyptians do, grouped in towns and villages, prefer dwelling in cottages and rural establishments in the midst of the fields, by the side of brooks, and on the declivities of mountains, gives altogether to the country an aspect of comfort and prosperity for which the traveller will look in vain elsewhere.

Their houses, too, which they are continually white-washing inside and out, look exceedingly well by the side of the green trees." This picture of country life speaks much for the general order and security which prevailed, and indicates that the measures taken by Almoravide and Almohade sovereigns to maintain a general respect for law had been successful.

During the disorders preceding the Almoravide conquest brigandage had become rife, and a quaint story is told of a certain brigand, Greyhawk by name, who was brought before Al Mutammed, King of Seville. This Greyhawk, having committed atrocious crimes, was condemned to be crucified, and while he hung on the cross watched by his devoted wife and daughter, he managed still to beguile an unwary traveller into leaving his laden mule to search for treasure in a well, upon which Greyhawk instructed his wife to make off with the mule and its burden. The traveller meanwhile died in the well, and Greyhawk was taken down from the cross and brought again before the King. "Tell me, O Greyhawk," said the King, "how couldst thou be guilty of such a crime as that now imputed