Abdelmummen died in 1162, leaving the kingdom to his son Cid Yussef, who built the mosque of Seville, the great aqueduct that brought water to that city, and the bridge across the Guadalquivir. He was killed in 1184 and his son Yacoub succeeded, who in the year 1195 won a great victory over Alfonso VIII, at the battle of Alarcos. A little more than a century previously the Moslems had gained another victory, at Zallaca; but these two, vast as were their results, were to be avenged by an overwhelming defeat which the God of the Christians was preparing for them.
The chronicles of the eleventh century (to turn back a moment) would not be complete without mention of the doughty deeds of the great Cid Campeador, who, like Count Fernan Gonzalez, was descended from Nuño Rastro, one of the first judges of Castile.
His real name was Rodrigo or Ruy Diaz, and he was born at Bivar, near the city of Burgos, about the year 1040, although so much of myth envelops him that the exact date of his birth is uncertain. At all events, he was a Castilian of noble birth, who at an early age commanded the forces of Sancho II of Castile, when that ruler deprived his brothers of their kingdoms of Leon and Galicia. According to the numerous “Ballads of the Cid,” which were written and sung as early as the twelfth century, no hero of history ever performed more valiant deeds than he, though he can hardly be held up to the world as a model of constancy and patriotism: for he fought, first on the side of his native Castile, then, becoming offended at a slight put upon him by King Alfonso (though he had led the army into Toledo), he went over to the Emir of Saragossa and battled stoutly for the Moors.
His first appearance seems to have been as the avenger of his father’s death, when he challenges his slayer, Count Lozeno, to mortal combat, and leaves him dead on the field. Then at the command of the king he marries the count’s daughter, the lovely Ximena, who has prayed her sovereign to avenge this deed; and yet when Rodrigo proposes, she consents to be his wife. The king argued, with true kingly logic, that “he whose hand had made her an orphan should of a right be her protector”; but the ballads do not tell us what Ximena thought about it. Still, they inform us often that he was in every respect a model husband, and that, more than all else in the world, he loved his gallant steed Babieca, his good sword Tizona, and his faithful wife Ximena—probably the order named being their rank in his affections.