Note 231 — Chapter VIII

The statement referred to in the Chronicle, that it was written four hundred years after the time of Charlemagne, is, of course, a very loose one; for Alfonso was not born in 1210. But I think he would hardly have said, “It is now full four hundred years,” (ed. 1541, fol. 228,) if it had been full four hundred and fifty. From this it may be inferred that the Chronicle was composed before 1260. Other passages tend to the same conclusion. Conde, in his Preface to his “Árabes en España,” notices the Arabic air of the Chronicle, which, however, seems to me to have been rather the air of its age throughout Europe.