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generated religious rhetoric. But more than a clash of civilizations, a crusade, or a jihad, the war resembled a chivalresque encounter between enemies who shared the same, secular culture. Throughout the fighting, as always in medieval wars between Spanish kingdoms, there were warriors who crossed the religious divide.
    Fighting began as an extension of business by other means. For most of the fifteenth century, Granada’s internal struggles weakened the kingdom and invited conquest, but Castilian kings reckoned that it was easier and more profitable to collect tribute. Traditionally, Granada bought peace by paying tribute to Castile every three years. The sources are imperfect, but contemporaries—presumably exaggerating—reckoned the value of the tribute at 20 to 25 percent of the revenue of the king of Granada. Even at more modest cost, the system was inherently unstable, because in order to sell truces, the Castilians had to keep up raids,and Granadines exploited breaches of the peace to launch counterraids of their own. Renewals of the truce were therefore always tense. Both sides appointed arbitrators to settle disputes arising from breaches of the peace, but the machinery seems to have been ineffective. Instances were repeatedly referred to the Spanish monarchs, who could respond only by making overtures to the king of Granada; and he, on the Moorish side, was one of the worst offenders in the matter of truce breaking. The Moors, the chronicler Alonso de Palencia thought, were “more astute in taking advantage of the truce”—by which he meant that the balance of profit from raiding accrued to their side.
    Mulay Hassan committed his greatest outrage in 1478, when he sacked the Murcian town of Cieza, putting eighty inhabitants to the sword and carrying off the rest. The helplessness of Ferdinand and Isabella in the face of such action was disturbing. They could not obtain the hostages’ release by diplomacy and could not afford ransom. Instead, to those families too poor to pay the price they gave permission to beg alms for the ransoms, and relieved them of the need to pay dues, tolls, and taxes on money sent to Granada to obtain the Ciezans’ release.
    By the end of the 1470s, however, Ferdinand and Isabella no longer needed peace on the Moorish front. War with Portugal and Castile’s own war of succession subsided. Unemployed warriors turned to the Moorish frontier, where Castilian noblemen were waging private war for profit. Mulay Hassan tried to quell them by seizing frontier strongholds. On a moonless and unsettled December night in 1481 they lunged forward against Záhara and other fortified places. The Christians were unprepared for an attack that was no longer a mere raid but an attempt to occupy permanently the assailants’ targets. At Záhara the attackers
    scaled the castle and took and killed all the Christians whom they found within, save the commander, whom they imprisoned. And when it was day they sallied forth…made captive one hundred and fifty Christian men, women, and children, and sent them bound to Ronda. 4
    Perhaps Mulay Hassan thought he could get away with it because the lord of the place was one of Isabella’s opponents. The Spanish monarchs, however, reacted with anger
    both because of the loss of this town and fortress and, even more, on account of the Christians who died there…. And if we can say we find any cause for pleasure in what has happened, it is only because it gives us an opportunity to put into immediate effect a plan which we have had in mind and which would one day surely come to fruition. In view of what has happened, we have resolved to authorize war against the Moors on every side and in such a manner that we hope in God that very soon not only will we recover the town that has been lost, but also conquer others, wherein Our Lord may be served, His holy faith may be increased, and we ourselves shall be well served. 5
    The king of Granada is supposed to have