The revolt led by the guerrilla unit…
October 1569 CE
The revolt led by the guerrilla unit based in the Alpujarra mountains, initially numbering only about four thousand men, has spread, the rebel forces quickly having grown to about twenty-five thousand.
The insurgents have murdered the few Christian families and priests who lived in their village and destroyed churches and sacred images.
A prominent Muslim from Albacete, Diego Alguazir, is said to have harbored resentment against Aben Humeya for having forcibly abducted a widowed cousin and making her his mistress, when with her social status he should have taken her as his wife.
(Alguazir will eventually marry her in Tétouan six years later.)
In order to avenge his cousin's honor, Alguazir has begun plotting Humeya's downfall.
Aben Humeya has also long distrusted his Turkish and African allies, whom he has removed from his camp to the frontier in Almeria and placed under the command of his cousin, Aben Aboo.
Alguazir had begun to play on the tensions that Humeya had reportedly had with the Turkish contingent of his army for quite some time.
He has gone to the Turks and claimed that "he had supplied Hashish to Aben Humeya in order that it be given to the Turkish captains so that they would be sedated and later, killed that night".
The Turks had refused the offer, explaining that the Turkish Caliphate had sent them "not to become kings but to assist the king of the Moors."
The Captains suggested that the best course was, after securing approval from Algiers, to put power in the hands of a local man of noble descent in whom one might have confidence, someone who would serve the interests of the Muslims.
In a coup engineered by the Turkish military experts, Aben Humeya is strangled to death in October 20, 1569, and Aben Aboo is proclaimed as Chief of the Moriscos under the name Mulley Abdalla.
Various Christian sources, including the historian Marmol, state that with his dying breath, Aben Humeya had declared himself a Christian and said that what he had done was in the prosecution of a family feud.
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