The fall of Granada (1492) and what came after

Part oneThe last war

In 1469 Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile married, and in the following decade they came to rule their two kingdoms together. In 1482 their armies began a war meant to finish the conquest of Granada. This time it was not a series of raids. They brought cannon and siege engines, and they took the towns of the kingdom one at a time, starting with Alhama in 1482. Malaga fell in 1487 after a long siege, and Almeria and Guadix followed.

Inside Granada the ruling family was divided. The sultan Abu l-Hasan was challenged by his own son Muhammad XII, known in Europe as Boabdil, and there was fighting between supporters of father, son and uncle. The kingdom's enemies took full advantage. By 1490 the city of Granada stood almost alone, cut off from the coast and from the farmland that had fed it. Its people held out through the siege of 1491, but supplies ran low.

The monarchs built a military camp, later the town of Santa Fe, within sight of the city. In November 1491 Boabdil agreed to terms. On paper they were generous. The treaty gave the people of Granada the right to keep their religion, their mosques, their law and their property, and it set a delay before the city was handed over.

Most accounts date the surrender to early January 1492, when Boabdil handed over the keys of the city. Ferdinand and Isabella raised their banners over the Alhambra, and the court moved into the old palace. Boabdil later crossed to Morocco. Nearly eight centuries of Muslim rule in Iberia had ended. In the same year, under the same crown, Christopher Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic.

Part twoThe century after

The first years were quiet, but the promises did not last. Within about eight years the terms of the treaty were being set aside. In 1499 the archbishop of Toledo, Cardinal Cisneros, began a campaign of mass baptism in Granada, and there was a revolt in the nearby mountains. In 1502 the crown ordered the Muslims of Castile to convert or leave. Most stayed and were baptised. They became known as Moriscos, a word used for converts from Islam and their descendants, though many kept their faith and their language in private. The Inquisition watched them closely. Some Moriscos wrote Spanish in Arabic letters, a form called aljamiado, so that their children could keep a link to the faith. Others tried to blend in, and the result for many families was an uneasy life between two worlds.

The Jews of Spain had already faced the same choice. In March 1492 a royal decree ordered them to accept baptism or leave the kingdoms within months. Tens of thousands left, many for North Africa and the Ottoman Empire, where the sultan Bayezid II received them. Their descendants, the Sephardic Jews, kept a Spanish dialect alive for centuries in the Ladino spoken in Istanbul, Salonica and elsewhere.

For centuries Muslims, Jews and Christians had lived side by side in the cities of al-Andalus, and the end of that mixed society was a loss for everyone who lived there. Many families, especially wealthy ones, left in the first years, selling what they could. They took their crafts, their books and their cooking to Fez, Tunis and Tlemcen, where Andalusi styles of music, building and food remain recognisable today.

Pressure on the Moriscos grew through the sixteenth century. Their language and dress were restricted, and in 1568 a revolt broke out in the Alpujarras, the mountains south of Granada. It was put down in 1571, and many Moriscos were moved to other parts of Spain. Between 1609 and 1614 the crown ordered all Moriscos to leave. Hundreds of thousands went, most to North Africa and some to the Ottoman lands and France. Their descendants live today in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The Moroccan port of Rabat grew partly through Morisco settlers in the early seventeenth century.

Al-Andalus did not vanish entirely. Spanish and Portuguese contain thousands of Arabic words, including the names of rivers and towns such as the Guadalquivir, from al-wadi al-kabir, the great river. The Alhambra still stands above Granada, with a palace of Charles V built beside it in the sixteenth century. The Great Mosque of Cordoba still stands too, although a cathedral was built inside it in the 1520s. Arabic works on medicine, astronomy and philosophy were translated into Latin in Toledo and elsewhere, and the knowledge in them travelled north to the rest of Europe.

Historians do not agree on a single reason for the loss of al-Andalus. Most point to a mix of causes: divisions among Muslim rulers, a heavy reliance on armies from outside, the gradual loss of cities, and the rising strength of the Christian kingdoms.

Within about eight years the terms of the treaty were being set aside.

WatchThe lecture for this chapter

Lecture Al MuqaddimahWhy did Muslims lose in Spain and Portugal? (opens on YouTube)

The mapWhere it happened

• Alhama
• Malaga
• Granada
• the Alpujarras
• Tangier
• Fez

This map is a simple sketch to help you picture where events took place. Positions, distances and borders are approximate, so please use it for reference only, not as an accurate map.

SourcesSources for this chapter