In their oldest romances--for instance, that of the "Children of Sara,"[5]
and in those to which they have given the name of _romances
fronterizos_, or romances of the frontier--they give the facts of the
war between the Mussulmans and the Christians.
[5 ] T. Ramon Manendez Pidal. La legende de les Infantes de Sara. Madrid,
1896. 8vo.
But they gave the name of Mauresques to another and different class of
romances, of which the heroes are chevaliers, who have nothing of the
Mussulman but the name. The talent of certain _litterateurs_ of the
sixteenth century exercised itself in that class where the persons are all
conventional, or the descriptions are all imaginative, and made a portrait
of the Mussulman society so exact that the romances of Esplandian, Amadis
de Gaul, and others, which evoked the delicious knight-errantry of Don
Quixote, can present a picture of the veritable chivalry of the Middle
Ages. We possess but few verses of the Mussulmans of Granada. Argot de Moll
preserved them in Arabic, transcribed in Latin characters, one piece being
attributed to Mouley Abou Abdallah:
"The charming Alhambra and its palaces weep
Over their loss, Muley Boabdil (Bon Abdallah),
Bring me my horse and my white buckler,
That I may fight to retake the Alhambra;
Bring me my horse and my buckler blue,
That I may go to fight to retake my children.
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