The Fall of Granada and the Rise of Spain
January 2nd marks the end of Islamic rule in Iberia, and the triumph of Christian determination — after nearly eight centuries of struggle.
The matter of when exactly the ‘Middle Ages’ ended and the ‘Modern Era’ dawned is a question whose answer will depend on where it is asked.
To the English, the death of King Richard III and the onset of the Tudor monarchy at Bosworth Field in 1485 is as good a response as any. In France, one might argue for 1453, when the victory of the House of Valois at Castillon brought an end to the Hundred Years’ War. In the East, the conquest of Constantinople the same year shall mark 1453 forever.
Few dates however mark the culmination of hard-won triumph more than the 2nd January 1492, when the surrender of the city of Granada heralded the final and total victory of Christendom in the Reconquista — a feat almost eight hundred years in the making.
Al-Andalus and the European Caliphate
As both the cause and consequence of the end of the Classical world, it is scarcely possible to exaggerate how swiftly Islam advanced from even its earliest days. Springing fully armed from the cradle, in less than a hundred years from the beginning of the Islamic Calendar in AD 622 — the year of Muhammad’s migration from Mecca to Medina — Muslim armies had vanquished those of the Romans and carved out an empire bounded by the walls of China in the East and the shores of the Atlantic in the West.
In AD 711, the forces of the Umayyad Caliphate made landfall upon the Iberian Peninsula, reaching the Pyrenees within just seven years. The emirs took up residence in Córdoba, and in less than a generation Christian Hispania had folded to Islamic Al-Andalus.
Yet while the victory of the crescent moon appeared everlasting, and the Caliphs turned towards southern France, the Cross held firm in one modest sliver of Iberia, under a young Visigothic nobleman who had just been crowned King of Asturias. For in AD 722 Pelagius, progenitor of the Christian monarchs of Spain, with barely three hundred men at his command, launched a lethal ambush upon a vast Muslim host from the mountains of the north.
An as-yet unheard of defeat for the Caliphate, the Battle of Covadonga would be the first cause of celebration for those who resisted. From such humble soil was the seed of the fightback, or Reconquista, planted.
The Turning of the Tide
Such was the disparity of force in Iberia, however, that while the Christians had all but lost this land in seven years, it would take a greater number of centuries to reverse the debacle.
Yet from the mountains, the Asturian David faced down the Córdoban Goliath, patiently awaiting, and exploiting, any opportunities that were to come. Opportunities there would be aplenty, for dramatic military conquests which span continents, after all, are prone to equally dramatic disintegration.
The Aghlabid invasion of Sicily, and fall of Taormina in AD 902, would represent the high watermark of Islamic expansion in Western Europe. By the turn of the second millennium, unity in the Muslim world was a distant memory, with the Umayyads having been overthrown by the Abbasids, resulting in multiple Caliphates. That of the East would buckle under the pressure of the Seljuk Turks and later the Mongols, while the Caliphate of Córdoba, established by the exiled Umayyads, would be crippled by infighting and splinter into fragment kingdoms, or taifas, in 1031.
The Christian Kingdom of Asturias was soon joined by those of León, Castile, Navarre and Aragon in the turning of the tide. The Second Crusade saw Afonso I drive the Almoravids from Lisbon in 1147, and all the Christian realms at last combined forces — albeit briefly — to crush the Almohads at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, thus triggering the withdrawal of the Caliphs from Iberia.
One by one, the Muslim taifas were defeated in detail until only one would survive the 13th century as a sovereign entity — the Emirate of Granada.
The Catholic Monarchs
For over two and half a centuries, the survival of the last emirate of Europe would be guaranteed by its three greatest lines of defence — the citadels of Andalusia, the walls of the Sierra Nevada mountains and above all, flagging unity of vision among the Christians, who increasingly turned their swords upon each other.
In 1469 however, the first great move to end the bickering which had long plagued the Christian realms came with the celebrated marriage of the monarchs who ruled the two most powerful of them — the seventeen year old King Ferdinand II of Aragon and eighteen year old Queen Isabella I of Castile.
With this Iberian Wedding, the seeds of a true united Christian front on the Peninsula were planted, though at first it seemed anything but. For the 1470s were dominated by an unedifying civil war which wracked the Spains, as the Portuguese and the French attempted to wrest control from Ferdinand and Isabella, and dethrone the latter.
While the resulting peace in 1479 ensured the destinies of Spain and Portugal would remain separate, it at last secured the union of Castile and Aragon, and paved the way for the completion of the Reconquista.
The Nasrids of Granada
Even in her twilight days Granada, the last redoubt of Islam in Iberia, housed many of the finer glories of Al-Andalus. The Nasrid dynasty, who had ruled her ever since Las Navas de Tolosa, held court not in a palace, but a city of palaces - the Alhambra, still today the jewel of Andalusia.
Yet the trappings of terrestrial paradise masked the impending doom of Granada — one propelled to ever closer reality by the death of Emir Yusuf III in 1417, the last of the great poets and builders to rule the Emirate. Tortured decades would plunge Granada into constant civil war or the fear of it.
While the realm spanned over half the coastline of southern Iberia, the authority of the emirs was seldom felt and rarely respected beyond the turrets and towers of the Alhambra. All that prolonged her stay of execution was the scarcely better conduct of the Christians, who turned upon their brothers as readily as their foes.
As if often the case in history, the one who presided over Granada’s fall was a man who inherited a situation already beyond salvation. Indeed when Muhammad XII, called Boabdil by the Spaniards, ascended the Nasrid throne in 1482, he was faced with war not only with kingdoms but his own family.
Such was the state of the Nasrid dynasty that Muhammad XII was only emir at all as a result of his mother Aisha plotting against her own husband, the Emir Abu'l-Hasan Ali — who had earned her wrath by falling in love with a Christian slave. Manipulated by his mother, the twenty two year old Muhammad rebelled against his father and seized the Alhambra.
Yet amid the intrigues of the Nasrids, the order which had permitted Granada’s survival was rapidly breaking down. Wiser emirs of the past, understanding the precarious nature of their realm, had sought diplomacy with the Christians and bought peace by tribute. Yet by the 1470’s, cross-border raids had grown ever more violent, heightening the risk of all-out war.
The Last War of the Reconquista
Such was the misfortune of Muhammad XII that when he came to the throne, the fatal move had already been made. In 1481, Emir Abu'l-Hasan Ali had stormed the Castilian town of Zahara, forcing Ferdinand and Isabella to act.
With war already underway, and his uncle and ruthless rival Al-Zagal meeting success against the Christians in the hinterlands of Málaqa (today’s Malaga), in 1483 Muhammad XII himself attacked Castile, only to be captured almost immediately and imprisoned near Lucena. The deadly power vacuum this created only heightened the anarchy in Granada, as Muhammad’s father promptly seized back his throne, amid boiling tensions with his uncle.
The Catholic Monarchs, seeing opportunity to conduct this last crusade of Iberia with as little open warfare as possible, turned the Nasrid feud upon their foes, and the same year, they released Muhammad. Under the terms of the Pact of Córdoba, Muhammad would be restored to his throne in Granada in exchange for surrendering the eastern cities of the Emirate, and agreeing to rule as a vassal to the Kingdom of Castile.
It would take years, however, for him to actually take back his throne. Following his father’s death in 1485, Al-Zagal seized the Alhambra and usurped the title of emir, forcing Muhammad to throw himself on the mercy of Ferdinand and Isabella. By now convinced that the culture of betrayal in Granada was irredeemable, and any accord guaranteed to be fruitless, the Catholic Monarchs resolved to conquer the Emirate in its entirety, once and for all.
In 1487, King Ferdinand marched on Málaqa, the primary port of Granada, at the head of over 20,000 men. For three terrible months the siege played out, with Al-Zagal, whose forces were tied down keeping the supporters of Muhammad at bay elsewhere, unable to lift it. On the 13th August, Málaqa surrendered, destroying the name of Al-Zagal in Granada, and finally permitting Muhammad to reign in the Alhambra once more.
Aided by modern artillery, the Castilian and Aragonese forces reduced the fortresses of the Emirate with record speed, allowing them to target Al-Zagal’s most zealous base of power, Almería, in 1489. But to get there, they would first have to fight the hardest battle of the war — the citadel of Baza proved purgatory on Earth for the Christians.
With the limited finances of Castile and Aragon stretched to the limit by the extent of a war that was by now an international crusade, blessed by Pope Innocent VIII himself, all that held the Christian army together was the authority and personal charisma of the monarchs themselves. While the King appealed to the pride of his officers, Queen Isabella herself took to the field at Baza, and by her fervent words and pious spirit inspired the armies to fight not for coin but for faith itself.
After six months of brutal siege warfare, Baza capitulated on the 4th December. Nineteen days later, Al-Zagal, acknowledging defeat, surrendered Almería before departing Iberia forever. Stripped of her last defensive rings, Granada, and Muhammad XII, now stood alone.
Granada — The Last Stand
It was in this moment that the last Emir of Granada made at once his bravest and most foolish move. Discontent with the occupation of lands he believed had been promised him, and urged by the proudest remnants of Al-Andalus in his court, in 1490 he renounced the Pact of Córdoba, rebelling against the monarchs he had pledged to serve. Disappointed at the needless prolonging of war, Ferdinand and Isabella prepared to besiege the last outpost of Islam in Western Europe.
Muhammad sent out urgent calls for aid to the sovereigns of the Muslim world from Morocco to Egypt, only to be met with effective silence. The sultans of Africa, after all, had long since seen the writing on the wall, and in any case, Granada no longer possessed a port to receive any such aid. Thus in April 1491, the gentle trickle of water in the fountains of the Alhambra was drowned out by the din of war, as the largest Christian army ever assembled in the Reconquista, as mighty as 80,000 strong, invested the city.
Even in their most desperate hour, the Muslims of Granada, their numbers greatly bolstered by those fleeing the Christian conquest elsewhere in the Emirate, presented a resistance characterised by a ferocity not seen in centuries. While the court was sharply polarised between those who preferred death to surrender and those who favoured peace while generous terms could still be won, the soldiers of Granada repulsed any attempt to storm the city.
Even the most modern of cannon likewise failed to breach the city’s formidable walls. Granada, it seemed, would be taken not by a battle of armies — but of wills.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to INVICTUS to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.