Shortly afterwards Aben-Humeya wrote again to both D. John and his father, this time sending the letters by Xoaybi, Alcaide of Guejar. This traitor read and kept them, in order to accuse and take him, as he in fact did.
At length D. John set out on his campaign with all his native energy, according to his wishes so long kept in check by his continual struggle with his advisers, all quarrelling, as D. Diego Hurtado de Mendoza so graphically paints in his laconic and celebrated letter to the Prince de Évoli. "Very illustrious sir—Truly nothing happens in Granada; the Lord D. Luis listens; the Duque (Sesa) fusses; the Marqués (Mondejar) discourses; Luis Quijada grumbles; Munatones submits; my nephew is there and is not missed here."
D. John sent one company of the army towards the Alpujarras, with the Duque de Sesa at their head, and himself attacked with the other, first, Guejar, a formidable place in which the Moors had one of their centres of operations, then reinforced with Berberiscos and Turks. By the clever manœuvre arranged by D. John they fell upon it unawares, and took the place and the castle with fewer losses and less difficulty than was feared.
The first to fly was the Alcaide Xoaybi, and he went proclaiming everywhere, to spite Aben-Humeya, that the latter was in treaty with the Christians to end the war and to give up the Moors, and in proof of this he showed a wrongly interpreted letter, kept by him at Guejar. They all believed the evil deeds of Aben-Humeya, which were many, and most of all a certain Diego Alguacil, a native of Albacete de Ujijar, who owed him a bitter grudge, because Aben-Humeya had, by evil intrigue, decoyed away a widowed cousin who was the mistress of Diego Alguacil. The kinglet took her by force, but she always kept up a correspondence with her cousin, to whom she told all Aben-Humeya's doings and plans.
Diego Alguacil made use of these advantages, and with a nephew named Diego de Rojas, and the renegade Diego Lopéz Aben Aboo, a dyer of the Albaicin, and the Turkish captains Huscein and Carafax, who had come from Algeria, contrived a plot, which would have been iniquitous had it not been against such a scoundrel as Aben-Humeya. They forged letters from him to Aben Aboo, ordering him to kill all the Turks treacherously, and then they went to Laujar de Andarax, where Aben-Humeya was, intending to take him and kill him. He, however, had had warning of what was happening, and decided to fly to Valor at daybreak on the 3rd of October, but he was kept that night by a festival, and tired by merry-making, put off the journey until the next day, though the horses were already saddled. This was his ruin, as with the dawn Diego Alguacil, Aben Aboo and the others arrived and assaulted the house, taking him unawares. Aben-Humeya went to the door half dressed, with a crossbow in his hand, followed by the Moorish widow; but, as this bad woman saw at a glance what was happening, she clung to him, as if frightened, but in reality to stop him using his arms or the crossbow, and to make it easy for the others to capture him. This Aben Aboo and Diego Alguacil did, tying his hands with an "almaijar" (turban of gauze) and his legs very tightly with a hempen cord.