G R A N A D A
THE CITY OF THE MOOR
Granada is the creation of the Moors. Its history is all of them—the record of their glory and their fall. The Pomegranate, as its conqueror styled it, ripened only in the warm sunshine of Islam, and withered with its decline. Under the Christian, it fell from the rank of a splendid capital to a poor provincial town. Now it subsists merely as a great monument to a vanished race and a dead civilisation.
With Granada before it became the centre of an independent kingdom, we need concern ourselves but little. Its real interest dates from the establishment of the Nasrite dynasty in the first half of the thirteenth century. It was the time when the great Almohade Empire was breaking up. Probably all Andalusia would have shared the fate of Cordova and Seville, and the conquests of the Catholic kings been anticipated by two centuries, had not a young man of Arjona, Ibn Al Ahmar by name, determined to fashion for himself a kingdom out of the fragments of empire. With an ever-increasing following, he seized upon Jaen in 1232, and obtained possession of Granada itself in 1237. City after city opened its gates to him, including Malaga and Almeria, and in 1241 he was recognised as Lord and Sultan of all the territory between the Sierra Morena and the Pillars of Hercules, from Ronda to Baza.
A great man, in every sense, was this founder of the Nasrite dynasty. His presence was fine and commanding, his manner bland and amiable, his courage worthy of the heroic age. For all his valour and prowess on the battlefield, no monarch prized peace more highly. He proved himself a true national hero and the father of his people. He fostered industry and agriculture, was a patron, like all his race, of arts and letters, and encouraged immigration by every means in his power. A far-sighted statesman, he perceived that a state so limited in area as his own could only hope to exist by virtue of an unusual density of population, and he offered every inducement to Muslims from the provinces conquered by the Christians to settle within his dominions. Granada was the last hope of Islam in Europe, and he resorted to all possible means to safeguard it. He concluded alliances with the rulers of Morocco, Tlemsen, and Tunis, and even of distant Baghdad. Above all, he neglected no means of humouring and conciliating the irresistible Castilian. He negotiated an alliance with Fernando III., binding himself to attend the Cortes (a curious stipulation for a Mohammedan) and to attend the king in his wars with 1500 lances. This latter part of the bargain he was speedily called upon to fulfil, and against his own co-religionists of Seville. It seemed an unnatural warfare, but, to palliate the iniquity, let it be said that Ibn Al Ahmar probably looked upon the Almohade citizens of Ishbiliah as heretics. At all events, whether his conscience approved his action or not, he contributed in no small measure to Fernando’s success, and was hailed enthusiastically as a conqueror upon his return to Granada. That the assistance he rendered was not looked upon as altogether voluntary by the people of Seville is shown by the fact that thousands of them migrated to his dominions and settled there.
Ibn Al Ahmar dreaded the might of Castile. The only hope for the Mohammedans of Spain lay, he knew, in rest and consolidation. Careful not to give offence to his dreaded neighbour, he courteously received the revolted and exiled Infante Don Enrique when he sought refuge at Granada, but sent him on to Tunis with letters recommending him to the Sultan of that country. All his diplomacy, however, could not avert a war with Alfonso, and to add to his troubles, the Walis of Guadix, Malaga, and Gomares revolted against his authority. But an insurrection soon after broke out in Castile, and Alfonso was compelled to leave the Walis to fight their own battles. Ibn Al Ahmar, an old man of eighty years, wearily girded on his armour for another of the campaigns he had learned to hate. But his time for rest had come at last. A few miles beyond the gates of his capital, his charger threw him, as he rode at the head of his army. He breathed his last at sundown, by the roadside, surrounded by his weeping warriors. It was a dark night for Granada.
Al Ahmar’s son, under the style of Mohammed II., succeeded him at the age of thirty-eight years, on January 21, 1273. Arabic historians have lavished their encomiums upon him, as indeed upon most of his dynasty. He is described as a warrior and a statesman, as a man of letters and a poet of considerable ability. During his reign of twenty-nine years, he was almost continuously at war. Soon after his accession he crushed the rebel Walis at Antequera, and then paid a visit to Alfonso X. at Seville, with a view to detaching the Castilian king from his alliance with the defeated insurgents. In this he was successful. Queen Violante, however, at the conclusion of his visit, asked of him a boon, which, according to the custom of the times, as a true knight, he was bound to grant. He then discovered, too late, that he had been tricked into granting a year’s truce to the Walis. Smouldering with rage, he returned to Granada and spent the year in maturing plans for the complete overthrow of his enemies. This he effected with the aid of the Sultan Yusuf of Morocco, whose army of 100,000 men landed at Tarifa in 1275. The Africans, as on previous occasions in Moorish history, proved dangerous allies. Mohammed found himself embroiled in a long and absolutely unprofitable war with Castile, and had the mortification of seeing the Africans possess themselves of Algeciras, Tarifa, and Malaga. He recovered possession of the latter town by bribing the governor to exchange it for the town of Salobreña, to be held as a personal acquisition; and rid himself at last of the troublesome Africans by means of an alliance with Sancho of Castile. But in 1302 we find him again at war with the Christians, fighting against whom he died.
Mohammed III. was the worthy son of his father, and is specially commended for his indefatigable energy. He took a short way with traitors, even for those rough times. Ibn Nasr, the governor of Guadix, having been removed from his office by the Sultan, exerted himself to form a faction in his favour. Mohammed III., hearing of this, summoned him to court, and had him slain there and then in his presence. A more honourable exploit was his conquest of the town of Ceuta, opposite Gibraltar, in the year 1306. With the rich spoils of the foray, he built a magnificent mosque at Granada, resplendent with gold and silver, jasper and marble. His success perhaps excited the jealousy of the Catholic powers. Attacked on either side by the Kings of Castile and Aragon, he was forced to conclude a humiliating peace. On his return to his capital he was seized in the Alhambra itself by a band of conspirators and forced to abdicate in favour of his brother, Muley Nasr. The new Sultan began his reign with some military successes (1309). He forced Jaime of Aragon to raise the siege of Almeria; but as a set-off, he had to deal with conspiracies and rebellions at home, the most formidable of these being headed by his nephew, Abu-l-Walid. In the midst of these complications a curious incident occurred. Nasr was stricken with apoplexy and left for dead. His deposed brother, Mohammed III., was then released by some courtiers and brought to Granada, only to find that the usurper had recovered his health and his crown. The luckless Mohammed did not long survive his partisans’ mistake. But retribution speedily overtook his brother. He was forced to yield to Abu-l-Walid, and was glad to be allowed to retire to Guadix, the sovereignty of which was allotted to him. Usurper though he was, Nasr conducted himself with the dignity of a philosopher. His rival’s triumph chagrined him not at all, and when invited by Pedro I. to join him in an attack on Granada, he patriotically declined. He was a brave man, who did not complain at meeting the fate to which he had subjected others.
The new monarch of Granada, Abu-l-Walid Ismail, was a fighter and a fanatic. He was fond of saying that he believed only in God and his good sword. His faith in the latter weapon was justified. He annihilated a Spanish army which had approached Granada, among the slain being the Infantes, Don Juan and Don Pedro; and carrying his victorious arms eastwards, wrested Baza and Martos from the enemies of his race. But others also reposed their faith in the sword. Like another Agamemnon, he appropriated a beautiful captive, the prize of the young Mohammed of Algeciras. Three days after his triumphal entry into his capital he fell at the gates of the Alhambra, a victim to the poniard of the man he had injured. Perceiving his sovereign to be at the point of death and resolving to avert the horrors of a disputed succession, the Wizir summoned the chief men of Granada to the palace, and announced that Abu-l-Walid was recovering from his wounds. The royal order was that all present should take the oath to the boy-prince, Muley Mohammed Ben Ismail, as successor to the kingdom. When this command had been obeyed, the wily Wizir announced the death of Abu-l-Walid and the accession of Mohammed IV. This was in the year 1325.
When he had freed himself from the control of an unpopular regent, the young Sultan displayed qualities of heart and mind in no way inferior to those of his progenitors. It must be admitted that Arab historians have been somewhat too partial to this line of kings, for there is hardly one who is not described more or less explicitly as a paragon of all the virtues. Mohammed IV. had to fight hard to hold his own against the Spaniards on one side and the Africans on the other. He took Gibraltar, and lost it again to Abu-l-Hasan of Fez. But the African king was soon after obliged to ask his help to hold the fortress against the Christians. Mohammed generously responded to the appeal, fell like a thunderbolt upon the Spanish camp, and raised the siege. He was ill repaid. In August 1333, he was imprudent enough to reproach his African allies with their inability to hold the fortress; and a day or two later, having sent his army home, made an excursion to the summit of the Rock. He was followed by some among those he had reproached, and quickly despatched by their poniards. His body, naked and mangled, was found at the foot of the Rock, and conveyed to Malaga. No attempt seems to have been made to identify or to punish his murderers.
The ill-fated Mohammed was succeeded by his brother, Yusuf I., Abu-l-Hejaj. While possessed, of course, of the virtues which seem to have been inherent in the Nasrite dynasty, this prince was exceptional in being an ardent, almost a passionate, lover of peace. He believed, says Don Francisco Pi Margall, that it was more glorious to remedy evils than to attempt perilous enterprises. Assisted by his able Wizir, Redwân, he revised the laws and purified the administration of justice. He built a magnificent palace at Malaga, and the great aljama or mosque at Granada, of which no trace remains. Abandoning for once his settled policy, he joined the Africans in a war against Castile. He was badly beaten, and was glad to negotiate a truce of ten years. At the end of that time, Alfonso of Castile died, and the Sultan of Granada was stabbed to death by a madman, while at his prayers in the mosque, in the year 1354.