64 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY to thee, being as it were under the very clutch of death ? " ** O King," replied the robber, '* if thou knewest how strongly nature impels me to the perpetration of such acts, and how great is the pleasure I enjoy while I commit them, I have no doubt but that thou wouldest relinquish the royal power and embrace my profession." That story and the state of affairs which it illustrates belong, however, to another period. The reign of the Almohade el Mansur, which lasted till 12 14, marks the greatest period of Almohade prosperity. It was during this reign, in the year T195, that the three Christian kings of Arragon, Castile, and Leon were overthrown in the celebrated battle of Alarcos, at which it was said that the loss of the Christians amounted to 146,000 men, besides 30,000 prisoners and an incredible amount of spoil. It would seem to be after this battle, though it is variously related and placed by some historians in the reign of one of the Almoravide sovereigns, that the Christian population of Granada, accused of intriguing with the governments of Christian Spain, was transported by the Moors in a body to Africa and settled by thousands in Mequinez, Sallee, and other towns of the western coast. An Arab historian who visited Sallee in the year 1360 says that at that time the town of Rabat, not far distant, was almost wholly inhabited by families from Granada.

Thus began in the twelfth century, after a long period of African domination in Spain, a reaction of Europe upon Africa which has continued to the present day. This expulsion of the Christians from Granada may be taken as the first of the great religious expulsions for which Spain became famous in later years. It is just to remember that the system was initiated by the Moors, and it is perhaps worth noting that the celebrated Averrhoes, one of the most famous among the many names associated with the enlightenment which Arab civilisation spread through the dark ages of medieval Europe, was so warm an advocate of the measure, that he took the trouble to cross from the Spanish Court to the Court of