Excursions in the mountains of Ronda and Granada, with characteristic sketches of the inhabitants of southern Spain, vol. 1/2

by C. Rochfort‏ Scott

The surpassing beauty of the wooded eminences overhanging the Darro and Genil, not less than the delightful temperature and excessive fertility of the outstretched vega, could not fail to have soon induced many of such earthly paradise-seekers as the Mohammedans to settle there; and doubtless, Granada, at an early date after the Saracenic conquest, again became a large and populous city; though not until the power of the crescent was on the wane; in fact, not until Cordoba and Valencia had fallen to the Christians, and Seville was threatened with destruction, did she assume a proud pre-eminence, by becoming the capital of the diminished, though scarcely weakened, dominions of Mohammedan Spain.

The first great augmentation the city had received was occasioned by the capture of the towns of Alhambra and Baeza, by Ferdinand III, (A.D. 1224) the inhabitants of which, driven to the southern side of the Guadalquivír, sought shelter behind the rugged mountains of Jaen, establishing themselves at Granada. The exiles of the former town there built a fortress, overhanging the left bank of the Darro, to which they gave the name of their regretted home; whilst those of the latter erected an equally formidable citadel on the opposite side of the river, which was called after them Al Bayzin, and eventually gave its name to the large and populous district of the city that, in the course of a few years, was clustered round its base.

The city, thus strengthened and augmented, was shortly afterwards (A.D. 1236) selected as the capital of a new kingdom, founded by Mohammed Abou Said, or, as from the name of his family he is generally called, Mohammed Alhamar;[132] and the throne continued in the family of that prince until A.D. 1492, when Ferdinand and Isabella planted the cross upon the towers of the Alhambra; a period of upwards of two centuries and a half.

The new kingdom erected by Mohammed Alhamar might have presented as impassable a barrier to the Christian arms as Turkey has offered, from the conquest of Constantinople to the present day, had not anarchy and dissension pervaded the other provinces of the Spanish peninsula, yet subject to the Moslems. But, jealous of each other, and differing in their views, they fell successively before the two enterprising sovereigns who, at that period, occupied the thrones of Castile and Aragon. Thus Cordoba, which had already ceded the pre-eminence to Seville, fell, unaided, into the hands of the Castillian in the very year that Granada became the capital of a formidable Mohammedan kingdom; and Valencia, only two years later, was also finally added to the conquests of the Christians. Even the city of Jaen, though fiercely contested for by Mohammed Alhamar, was at last ceded by treaty to his better-supported antagonist, San Fernando, who then, with consummate policy, forming an alliance with the king of Granada, induced him to assist in the subjugation of Seville.

This important city, which, a short time previously, had adopted a Republican form of government, and, with democratic jealousy, had kept aloof whilst the Christians were crippling the growing power of the neighbouring kingdom of Granada, now reaped the fruits of its short-sighted policy; being obliged, after a short but obstinate struggle, to bend the neck to the Castillian yoke.

Murcia on one side, and Algarbe on the other, were soon afterwards added to the conquests of the allied sovereigns of Castile and Aragon. So that, before the first monarch of Granada had closed his reign, all the Mohammedan states and cities, which had repudiated his alliance, fell in detail to the Christian arms.

The kingdom of Mohammed Alhamar, which thenceforth had to contend single-handed against the Christians, was respectable in size, though but a fragment of the vast dominions of the Caliphs of the West. It extended far beyond the limits of the modern kingdom of Granada, and comprised all the mountainous portions of those of Jaen, Cordoba, Seville, and Murcia; thus stretching along the sea-shore from Cape Trafalgar to Cape de Gatte, and forming a compact and very defensible territory.

Its population, too, was great beyond all proportion to its extent; the inhabitants of the various cities captured by the Christians having, by an inconceivable act of barbarity and impolicy, been driven from their homes to seek shelter within the mountain-girt kingdom of Granada. So enormous, indeed, is the amount of population said to have been, that the Capital alone could furnish an army of 50,000 fighting men.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the Moors, thus concentrated, should have been able to maintain their independence for so extended a period; especially, when we consider the want of unanimity that prevailed amongst the Christian princes, from the death of St. Ferdinand until the union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon, in the persons of Ferdinand V. and Isabella.

The city still covers a considerable extent of ground, though certainly far less than it must have occupied when swarming with half a million Mohammedans. The approach to it, on the Malaga side, is particularly fine; a handsome stone bridge (built by the French during their occupation of the province in the “war of independence”) spans the sparkling Genil—the Singilis of the Romans. Immediately beyond this bridge rise crenated walls, and terraced gardens, domes, minarets, and shining steeples, reaching to the base of the dark rocks that bear the yet darker towers of the proud Alhambra.