Siege of Granada
Surrender of Granada, historicizing painting from 1882
| date | April 11, 1491 to January 2, 1492 |
|---|---|
| place | Granada |
| output | Surrender of the Moors |
| consequences | End of Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula |
| Peace treaty | Treaty of Granada |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
|
|
|
| Troop strength | |
| 40,000, 10,000 of them cavalry | unknown |
.svg){kind=small}
.svg){kind=small}
With the siege of Granada by the troops of the Catholic Kings Isabella I and Ferdinand V and the forced surrender of the city and the Alhambra in 1492, the rule of the Moors on the Iberian Peninsula was ended.
prehistory
At the beginning of the 8th century, Muslim troops conquered almost the entire Iberian Peninsula. In the course of the following centuries the area ruled by Muslims became smaller and smaller and was ultimately limited to the Emirate of Granada . From 1482 onwards, efforts were made to include the Kingdom of Granada in the territory of the Crown of Castile. Disputes in the ruling family weakened the defenses of the emirate. Muhammad XII. (known as "Boabdil"), the son of the Emir Abu l-Hasan Ali , tried his father and his uncle Muhammad XIII. (known as "El Zagal"). But he only partially succeeded, so that the emirate was temporarily divided into two domains.
Boabdil was captured twice, in 1483 and 1486, by the troops of the Catholic Kings during the fighting. In 1483 he was released after signing a two-year peace agreement. In 1486 he was even given weapons and food to rebel against his uncle in Granada. After Muhammad XIII surrendered the cities of Almería and Guadix to the Catholic kings without a fight in December 1489, he went into exile in North Africa. At the end of 1489, the only remaining Moorish bastion was Granada.
In January 1490, Boabdil offered the Catholic kings handover negotiations through the vizier Al-Mulih. Martín de Alarcón and Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar represented the Catholic kings at the negotiations in Granada. However, these remained without any tangible result. One reason for the failure is believed to be that Boabdil continued to hope for support from North Africa. In the course of the year, volunteers from North Africa actually arrived in Granada, with whose support Boabdil was able to conquer the coastal city of Adra and the city of El Padul and thus, after the loss of Almería, Granada had a connection to the sea again.
siege
After the negotiations between the Catholic Kings and Boabdil failed in 1490, the Christian troops planned a large-scale encirclement of the city of Granada. Since this siege was likely to take a long time, it was not planned to begin until 1491. In preparation for the starvation of the city, the crops were systematically destroyed in the fertile Vega in 1490. Diego López de Pacheco y Portocarrero, Marquis of Villena, was appointed Commander in Chief (Capitán general) of the coming military action. Since the usual artillery bombardment of a besieged city was not planned, the German artillerymen, who had formed part of the Castilian troops since the siege of Ronda, were released at the end of the year. The other units were recruited on March 30, 1491.
From Seville, the Catholic Monarchs set out for Granada in April 1491. At the end of the month, another siege ring was closed around the city almost without a fight, which was tightened in the coming period so that the food supply could be cut off.
At the beginning of June, work began on building a new military base called Santa Fe about ten kilometers northwest of Granada . In contrast to the previous camps, this camp was not a temporary facility, but consisted of permanently erected buildings. There was a market place at the intersection of two main streets. The whole was surrounded by moats and fortified walls with eighty towers. This is the place where the Catholic kings and their courtiers settled.
From August onwards, there was no longer any significant fighting in the vicinity of Granada. Within the city, a dispute arose between the supporters of a quick, non-fighting surrender with the possibility of achieving honorable conditions and the opponents of a surrender. In addition to the ancestral residents, there were a large number of refugees living in Granada from the areas that had been conquered by the Christian troops in recent years. Including former Christians who had converted to Islam ( called elches ). If they were captured by Christian troops, they would face conviction by the Inquisition. These refugees mostly had nothing left to lose and were therefore opposed to any kind of surrender. It is believed that long before the start of official negotiations, perhaps even before the start of the siege, secret negotiations had taken place and that there was even a finished handover agreement and that Boabdil only waited to save face until the population demanded surrender.
Treaty of Granada
The official negotiations on the side of the Emirates of Granada were conducted by the vizier Abu'l Qasim Abd al-Malik and Muhammad al-Baqqani. The Kingdom of Castile was represented by the royal secretary Fernando de Zafra and Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar . On November 25, 1491, in the camp of Santa Fe, the treaties regarding the surrender of Granada to the Catholic Kings were signed. These contracts consisted of 77 sections in which on the one hand the rights of the conquerors but also the rights of the conquered were specified in detail.
The Emir Muhammad XII. it was promised that he and his family would receive a small rule in the Alpujarras region, which as a Muslim enclave should be subject to his power. Similar regulations existed for some senior dignitaries of the Emirates. It is often assumed that the surrender conditions were only so favorable because King Ferdinand agreed to the contracts with the ulterior motive of soon finding pretexts to limit the concessions. In fact, ten years later, a very large part of the rights of Muslims no longer existed.
Handover of the city and the castle
The transfer of the city was planned in the agreement of November 25, 1491 for January 23. In order to avoid a possible uprising in the city, soldiers under the command of Gutierre de Cárdenas, with the consent of Boabdil, occupied all strategically important places on the Alhambra on January 1st, 1492 at midnight and hoisted the royal banner and the flag of the Order of Santiago one of the towers. The emir formally handed over the keys of the city to the representative of the Catholic Kings.
After this symbolic act, hardly noticed by the public, the official ceremony took place on January 2, 1492. The pageant was led by King Ferdinand. At some distance followed Queen Isabella with her children, then Cardinal Pedro González de Mendoza and representatives of the nobility and the cities of Castile. The emir rode towards the parade and gave the kings the key of Granada and the future commander of the Alhambra and Capitán General Íñigo López de Mendoza y Quiñones the ring of the regents of Granada. The prisoners on both sides were then released and Boabdil and his family went to the Alpujarras . The Castilian pageant went through the city up to the Alhambra.
literature
- Thomas Freller: Granada, Kingdom between Orient and Occident . Jan Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2009, ISBN 978-3-7995-0825-4 , p. 216 .
- Joseph Perez: Ferdinand and Isabella . Callwey, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-7667-0923-2 , pp. 394 (from the French by Antoinette Gittinger).
- Luis Suárez Fernández: El Tiempo de la Guerra de Granada . Ediciones Rialp SA, Madrid 1989, ISBN 84-321-2560-1 , pp. 315 (Spanish).
Web links
- Tratado de Granada. Retrieved December 10, 2014 (Spanish).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Thomas Freller: Granada, Kingdom between Orient and Occident . Jan Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2009, ISBN 978-3-7995-0825-4 , p. 118 .
- ↑ Thomas Freller: Granada, Kingdom between Orient and Occident . Jan Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2009, ISBN 978-3-7995-0825-4 , p. 126 .
- ↑ Thomas Freller: Granada, Kingdom between Orient and Occident . Jan Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2009, ISBN 978-3-7995-0825-4 , p. 126 .
- ↑ Thomas Freller: Granada, Kingdom between Orient and Occident . Jan Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2009, ISBN 978-3-7995-0825-4 , p. 135 .
- ^ Luis Suárez Fernández: El Tiempo de la Guerra de Granada . Ediciones Rialp SA, Madrid 1989, ISBN 84-321-2560-1 , pp. 239 (Spanish).
- ↑ Joseph Perez: Ferdinand and Isabella . Callwey, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-7667-0923-2 , pp. 212 (from the French by Antoinette Gittinger).
- ↑ Joseph Perez: Ferdinand and Isabella . Callwey, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-7667-0923-2 , pp. 212 (from the French by Antoinette Gittinger).
- ↑ Thomas Freller: Granada, Kingdom between Orient and Occident . Jan Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2009, ISBN 978-3-7995-0825-4 , p. 137 .
- ↑ Joseph Perez: Ferdinand and Isabella . Callwey, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-7667-0923-2 , pp. 213 (from the French by Antoinette Gittinger).
- ↑ Joseph Perez: Ferdinand and Isabella . Callwey, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-7667-0923-2 , pp. 214 (from the French by Antoinette Gittinger).