Conquest of Granada

6 Key excerpts on "Conquest of Granada"

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  Warfare in Early Modern Europe 1450–1660

  • Paul E.J. Hammer(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  [ 4 ] The Cannon Conquest of Nāṣrid Spain and the End of the Reconquista Weston F. Cook, Jr.

  Great towns —which once couid have held out a year against all joes but hunger—now fell in a month.

  Andreá Bernáldez, Memorias

  So when we became weak, the Spaniards camped in our land and smote us town after town, bringing many great cannons that broke down their brawny walls. Anonymous Granadan, circa 1501

  THE coincidence of Spain's final subjugation of Islamic Granada in 1492 with the five hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the New World provides an opportunity for military historians to rediscover the "last Reconquista."1 Oddly, the 1481-92 Granada War, has never been a favorite of military scholars, even though the struggle took place in the dawning decades of the "Early Modern Military Revolution."2 As historians, they have even more boldly ignored "the decisive role of artillery in the last struggle against the Moors."3 Yet, recognized or not, the Castilian conquest of Muslim Spain was a key milestone in the military revolution process because cannons truly dictated the war's outcome. Gunpowder firepower and artillery siege operations won the Granadan war, and other factors in the Spanish victory were actually secondary and derivative.

  This cannon conquest thesis may strike some as self-evident, but it remains a thesis only occasionally propounded and never really examined,4 In modern times, the war for Muslim Spain is eclipsed by the global impact of Europe's conquest of the Americas. In its own time, however, defeat of the Granada Amirate was no local Spanish event. Observers like Mártir and Bernáldez saw the extinction of Granada as key to Spain's national identity and unity, but also as a step towards reclamation of the entire Holy Land from Islam.5 Beyond Iberia, Granada's fall set off shock waves that disrupted regional balances long after 1492. Heir of seven centuries of an independent Islamic Iberian civilization, Granada, and its ruling house, the Nasrid dynasty, had ties to Cairo, North Africa, and the powerful Ottoman Empire.6

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  The Rise and Fall of the Spanish Empire

  • William Maltby(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  The king may not have shared these fantasies with the same degree of enthusiasm, but he knew that they reflected the popular will and had no intellectual basis for rejecting them. Political theory in Spain and elsewhere held that the legitimacy of the monarchy depended on its relationship to God. Kings ruled as God’s representatives on earth. Their power might be in theory absolute, but in practice they were to seek the advice of their subjects and rule in accordance with Divine Will and natural law. Much of the chaos in the preceding reign had arisen from the perceived failure of Enrique IV to do either. Ferdinand sometimes tried to moderate the crusading impulses of Isabella and her court, but he never openly rejected their vision of both divine and popular will.

  THE Conquest of Granada

  Granada, the last Muslim foothold on the Iberian Peninsula, therefore provided Ferdinand and Isabella with a unique opportunity. Its fall would complete the Reconquest and bring enormous prestige to the conquerors without threatening the other Christian dynasties of Europe. The Pope, in fact, was pressing them to launch a crusade and had granted them the right to levy a cruzada , or crusade tax for its support. Internally, war against the Muslims would divert the martial energies of the nobility and provide them with the hope of new wealth. The Castilian towns would be happy to use their militias in a cause that promised Muslim booty to supplement their otherwise stagnant economies, and a victory could, in time, add to the crown’s own revenues. The war for Granada would in fact prove extremely popular, not only in the Spanish kingdoms, but throughout Europe. Volunteers and mercenaries came from as far away as England and Germany to join the king’s men, the retinues of the great nobles, and the militias of the Spanish towns in driving the infidel from Europe.

  At first, the war for Granada resembled earlier episodes in the Reconquest. The Granadan border had long been chaotic. Raids and counter-raids caused extensive damage and loss of life, and forced the great lords of Castilian Andalusia to maintain private armies to protect their patrimonies. Royal authority in the region was almost non-existent. In 1482 the Marquis of Cádiz seized the Muslim town of Alhama in what appeared to be a normal raid. This time, however, the royal army moved to support him. In the same year, the growing weakness of Granada’s ruler, Muley Hassan, provoked a dynastic quarrel between two of his sons who are usually known by their nicknames, El Zigal and Boabdil. Both assumed that, in the tradition of Iberian warfare, each could use Ferdinand and his army against the other. Ferdinand was, of course, happy to encourage their civil war for his own purposes.

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  Ferdinand and Isabella

  • J. Edwards(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 5Diplomacy and Expansion

  Conquest

  Whatever ventures of conquest were to be undertaken by Ferdinand and Isabella outside their own kingdoms, after 1492, would inevitably have before them the precedent of their successful war in Granada. As was noted earlier, it was not entirely clear, in the earlier campaigns, that the aim had become conquest, rather than the traditional one of raiding Muslim territory (talas ) and demanding cash tribute (parias ). When the war began, no new places had been permanently captured by the Castilians since Jimena in 1456, but although Isabella’s half-brother Henry had largely restricted himself to the tala approach, she and her husband did have before them the Castilian and Aragonese precedents of the thirteenth century.1 Ferdinand and Isabella’s strategy for the conquest, and where appropriate the settlement, of the Nasrid emirate gradually emerged in the agreements (capitulaciones ), between Christians and Muslims, which normally ended each campaigning season. Such documents existed in various types, the first being, as Ladero puts it, ‘their very absence’ (su misma ausencia ).2 In such cases, towns and castles surrendered unconditionally, which meant that all the inhabitants went into captivity and all their property was confiscated. This was simply a development of the traditional practice, on both sides, of taking and ransoming prisoners and it reached its most extreme manifestation in the aftermath of the siege of Málaga, in which 11,000 Muslims were seized (see Chapter 3 ).

  Normally, however, some form of agreement was reached in which, in return for surrender, the existing inhabitants would have their lives guaranteed, as well as their property, which they could take with them if they were forced to leave. If they were allowed to remain, they would be guaranteed religious freedom and allowed to retain their existing social organization, their community tax regime, based on Islamic principles, and the ability to carry on their previous work, with proper remuneration. The generosity of the terms offered by Castile in such agreements varied as the war went on. In the earlier phase of Christian successes, from 1484 to 1487, the Muslim population normally had to leave captured towns, if it had put up armed resistance, taking whatever goods people could carry with them. They might be allowed by the Crown to emigrate to other parts of Castile, to North Africa or even, as in the case of the inhabitants of fortresses in the Vega of Granada in 1486, to the unconquered city of Granada itself. Initially, the wealthy and powerful among the Muslim population were encouraged to emigrate to North Africa, but later they had to pay a toll and give a proportion of their property for the privilege. Up to 1487 the new Castilian regime adopted the policy of re-employing existing local officials, in towns that had freely surrendered, and allowing them to retain their property. Pacts made in this period normally required the immediate and unconditional release of all Christian prisoners.

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  Muslim Spain and Portugal

  A Political History of al-Andalus

  • Hugh Kennedy(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The Nasrids of Granada

  Ibn al-Aḥmar and the foundation of the Nasrid kingdom, 1232–73

  The foundations of the Kingdom of Granada were laid in the turbulent years of the second quarter of the thirteenth century.1 The triumphant progress of the Christian reconquest of the 1230s and 1240s reached its culmination with the taking of Seville in 1248. It must have seemed to many on both sides of the religious divide that the catastrophe would engulf the whole of al-Andalus, but in fact this did not happen and the Kingdom of Granada was to survive for another two and a half centuries.

  The history of the Kingdom of Granada is frustratingly difficult to discuss in any depth. We can be reasonably sure about the comings and goings of the rulers and the progress of warfare against the Christians but little else. This makes for a linear narrative rather than political analysis. We know little about events outside the capital and we have virtually no information about the provincial governors. This in turn makes it very difficult to understand the civil wars, especially those in the fifteenth century, which played such an important part in the decline of the kingdom. We know that there were important families like the Banū Sarrāj and Banū Kumāsha, but we cannot tell the basis of their power: was it control over the government in Granada or did they have local power bases where they could raise money and military support to pursue their ambitions at the centre? Were there differences of policy towards Castile, a peace party and a war party? Did commercial interests play a part in deciding policy? The answer to these central questions is quite obscure and much of the political history can seem like no more than a series of damaging and pointless palace intrigues.

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  War in the Iberian Peninsula, 700–1600

  • Francisco García Fitz, João Gouveia Monteiro(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  With the death of Muhammad V, under Yusuf II (d. 1392) and especially under Muhammad VII (d. 1408), frontier skirmishes became more frequent: Enrique III (d. 1406) was ready to resume war as early as 1400. The times of Castilian weakness were already over and Granadan incursions offered a wonderful excuse to wage war. Between 1407 and 1491, continuity characterized the Castilian political agenda: their common will to finish off the political existence of Granada and to incorporate the territory of the emirate. Hence, the life of 15th-century Granada had to surrender to the vicissitudes of Castilian weakness or strength, caused by the different political junctures brought about by the struggle between the nobility and the monarchy (Ladero Quesada 2000: 189–210; Molina 2000: 211–248).

  From Yusuf II to Abu Nasr Sa‘d (d. 1464), up to eight sultans succeeded one another, some of them more than once. It was the beginning of the period of decadence, aggravated by dynastic conflicts, internal crises and economic problems, derived from ever-increasing isolation from the remaining Islamic world. Only the brief interval corresponding to the reign of Enrique IV (d. 1474) and the Castilian crisis which began in 1464, granted a short truce to the Nasrid emirate. However, the union of Castile and Aragon through Isabel and Fernando, which came into effect in 1479, and the new sociopolitical tendencies of kingdoms about to become modern states, resulted in the definitive assault on the emirate, which began with the conquest of Alhama in 1482. As if this were not enough, the internal Nasrid crisis and their dynastic struggles precipitated the fatal outcome of an emirate which was under constant civil war during its last decades between the supporters of Abu al-Hasan ‘Ali (Mulay Hacen of the Castilian chronicles, d. 1485) and of his son Muhammad XI (Boabdil, d. 1533) (González Jiménez 2000: 453–476).

  Granadan towns fell one by one into Castilian hands: Ronda in 1485, Loja in 1486, Malaga in 1487 and Baza in 1489. That same year Mulay Hacen’s brother handed over Almería and Guadix. Capitulation negotiations of the capital started in August 1491 and came into effect on 2 January 1492 with Boabdil’s retirement to the manor of Las Alpujarras, a personal compensation for the surrendering of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs. The Muslims were allowed to preserve their faith, their estates and their life until 1501, when Cardinal Cisneros, archbishop of Granada, betrayed the capitulation pact and ordered mandatory conversion or the expulsion of the Muslims. A few years later, the same occurred in the remaining Castilian-Aragonese territories. This was the end of al-Andalus (González Jiménez 2000: 453–476).

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  The Last Crusade in the West

  Castile and the Conquest of Granada

  • Joseph F. O'Callaghan(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • University of Pennsylvania Press

    (Publisher)

  57 The romance “En la ciudad de Granada/Grandes alaridos dan”—“In the city of Granada great cries are heard”—described the great transition that took place:

  Unos llaman a Mahoma	Some prayed to Muḥammad,
  Otros a la Trinidad.	and others to the Trinity.
  Por un cabo entraban cruces	Crosses entered on one side,
  De otro sale el Alcoran.	while the Qur’an left on the other.
  Donde antes oian cuernos	Where once horns were heard,
  Campanas oy sonar.	bells now ring.
  El Te Deum laudamus se oya	The Te Deum laudamus is heard
  En lugar del Alha-alha.	in place of Alha-alha.58

  The Celebration of Victory

  After taking possession from the Moors, Fernando communicated that news to his people, the pope, and the western world. On 2 January he announced, “After such great labor, expense, exhaustion of our kingdoms, deaths, and the bloodshed of so many of our subjects . . . it pleased our Lord to put a welcome end to the war” against the Moors who had occupied the emirate of Granada “for more than 780 years.” He urged Seville to give thanks to God for “this glorious victory” that exalted the Catholic faith and brought such honor to his realms and repose to his people, who served “with so much faith and loyalty in this holy conquest.”59 As it had on receiving notices of previous victories, Seville celebrated the fall of Granada with “alegrías ” that included a procession with the statue of Nuestra Señora de los Reyes and several bullfights.60

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