From Aben Hud, the Moorish
king, the conqueror of the Almohades, was descended in right line
Cid Yahia Abraham Alnagar, prince of Almeria, who married a daughter
of King Bermejo. They had three children, commonly called the
Cetimerian Princes. 1st. Yusef ben Alhamar, who for a time usurped the
throne of Granada. 2d. The Prince Nasar, who married the celebrated
Lindaraxa. 3d. The Princess Cetimerien, who married Don Pedro Venegas,
captured by the Moors in his boyhood, a younger son of the House of
Luque, of which house the old count was the present head.
Understanding from the count that he had some curious relics of
the Conquest, preserved in his family archives, I accompanied him
early one morning down to his palace in Granada to examine them. The
most important of these relics was the sword of the Grand Captain; a
weapon destitute of all ostentatious ornament, as the weapons of great
generals are apt to be, with a plain hilt of ivory and a broad thin
blade. It might furnish a comment on hereditary honors, to see the
sword of the grand captain legitimately declined into such feeble
hands.
The other relics of the Conquest were a number of espingardas or
muskets of unwieldy size and ponderous weight, worthy to rank with
those enormous two-edged swords preserved in old armories, which
look like relics from the days of the giants.
Besides other hereditary honors, I found the old count was Alferez
mayor, or grand standard-bearer, in which capacity he was entitled
to bear the ancient standard of Ferdinand and Isabella, on certain
high and solemn occasions, and to wave it over their tombs.
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