Abu'l-Hasan Ali of Granada

Abu'l-Hasan Ali ibn Sa'd (أبو الحسن علي; d. 1485), known as Muley Hacén in Spanish (Muley being derived from Arabic مولاي mawlāy = "my lord" ), was the twenty-first Nasrid ruler of the Emirate of Granada in Spain, from 1464 to 1482 and again from 1483 to 1485.

Life
The son of Sa'd, Abu'l-Hasan Ali became sultan in 1464, and in 1477 he refused to pay tribute to the Crown of Castile. In 1481 he ordered an invasion to the city of Zahara de la Sierra by surprise, killing and enslaving the unarmed Christian Zaharans. This action was taken by Isabella I of Castile as a reason to start the war against Granada.

He was the father of Muhammad XII (also known as Boabdil), the last sultan of Granada, by his relative Aixa.

He abandoned Aixa to marry the former Christian slave Isabel de Solís, the daughter of Sancho Jiménez de Solís, Alcalde of La Peña de Martos, who he gave the name Zoraida or Soraya (Thuraya, "Star") after her conversion to Islam and with whom he had two sons. This marriage caused a scandal. In 1482, he was ousted by a rebellion supported by Aixa and replaced by the son of his first marriage, Boabdil.

He was able to retake the throne in 1483, and reigned a further two years. He died in 1485, and was succeeded by his brother. After the defeat of Granada in 1492, Zoraida and her two sons re-converted to Catholicism. The sons took the names of Juan de Granada and Fernando de Granada.

Culture
Mulhacén, the highest mountain of the Iberian Peninsula, is named after Abu'l-Hasan Ali. Abu l-Hasan Ali appears as a character, along with Isabel de Solís, in the novel "People of the Book" by Geraldine Brooks, and Part 17 of Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra briefly mentions Mula Abul Hassan.

He is also a subject in one of Naseem Hijazi's famous novels Shaheen which portrays him as brave and a struggler for justice (mujahid) who is not even ready to pay tribute to Christians which he considers as a form of slavery and his conscience doesn't permit him to do so.