The "sword of Aliatar," preserved in the Museum of Artillery at Madrid, is said to have been wrested from the clenched hand of that warrior, father-in-law of Boabdil and governor of Loja, as his corpse was swept away down stream after the rout of the Moorish expedition at Lucena. This arm is richly damascened as well as decorated with the characteristic _ataujía_. The centre of the hilt is made of ivory, and the pommel and crossbars--which latter terminate in elephants' heads with slightly upturned trunks--of damascened and inlaid iron, ornamented here and there with _ataujía_. Part of the blade--probably about an eighth--is broken off. The sheath has disappeared.
An idle superstition has attributed the so-called "sword of Abindarraez" to the hero of the well-known sixteenth-century romance entitled _The Abencerraje and the Beautiful Jarifa._ This weapon, which for many years was in possession of the Narvaez family, belongs at present to the Marquis of La Vega de Armijo. The decoration is not particularly rich, and part of it is worn away; but the narrow blade is still engraved with figures or portraits from the story which has given the sword its name.
The sword (Pl. xliv.) belonging to the Marquises of Campotejar, and which is preserved in the Casa de los Tiros at Granada, bears some resemblance to the "sword of Aliatar," and has about the same dimensions. Although it is commonly believed that Boabdil was the original owner of this sword, Gómez Moreno considers that more probably it belonged to one of the Moorish princes of Almería. The handle and crossbars, as well as the shape of the sheath, are silver-gilt, covered with minute arabesque ornamentation forming leaves and stems, and further decorated with enamel. The sheath is of Morocco leather worked with silver thread. The crossbars, curving abruptly down,[119] terminate in elephants' trunks boldly upturned towards the pommel. The blade is stamped with a Toledo mark consisting of Castilian letters and a pomegranate.
[119] In the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, this characteristically eastern downward curve of the crossbars grew to be popular even with the Christian Spaniards, as we observe from the swords of Ferdinand himself, preserved in the Royal Armoury at Madrid, and the Chapel Royal of the cathedral of Granada.