Granada War

The Emirate of Granada had been the last Muslim state in Iberia for more than two centuries by the time of the Granada War. The other remnant al-Andalus states (the taifas) of the once powerful Caliphate of Córdoba had long since been conquered by the Christians. Pessimism for Granada's future existed before its ultimate fall; in 1400, Ibn Hudayl wrote "Is Granada not enclosed between a violent sea and an enemy terrible in arms, both of which press on its people day and night?"[3] Still, Granada was wealthy and powerful, and the Christian kingdoms were divided and fought amongst themselves. Granada's problems began to worsen after Emir Yusuf III's death in 1417. Succession struggles ensured that Granada was in an almost constant low-level civil war. Clan loyalties were stronger than allegiance to the emir, making consolidation of power difficult. Often, the only territory the emir really controlled was the city of Granada. At times, the emir did not even control all the city, but rather one rival emir would control the Alhambra, and another the Albayzín, the most important district of Granada.[4]

This internal fighting greatly weakened the state. The economy declined, with Granada's once preeminent porcelain manufacture disrupted and challenged by the Christian town of Manises near Valencia, in the Crown of Aragon. Despite the weakening economy, taxes were still imposed at their earlier high rates to support Granada's extensive defenses and large army. Ordinary Granadans paid triple the taxes of (non-tax-exempt) Castilians.[4] The heavy taxes that Emir Abu-l-Hasan Ali imposed contributed greatly to his unpopularity. These taxes did at least support a respected army; Hasan was successful in putting down Christian revolts in his lands, and some observers estimated he could muster as many as 7,000 horsemen.[5]

The frontier between Granada and the Castilian lands of Andalusia was in a constant state of flux, "neither in peace nor in war."[5] Raids across the border were common, as were intermixing alliances between local nobles on both sides of the frontier. Relations were governed by occasional truces and demands for tribute should those on one side have been seen to overstep their bounds. Neither country's central government intervened or controlled the warfare much.[5]

King Henry IV of Castile died in December 1474, setting off the War of the Castilian Succession between Henry's daughter Joanna la Beltraneja and Henry's half-sister Isabella. The war raged from 1475–1479, pitting Isabella's supporters and the Crown of Aragon against Joanna's supporters, Portugal, and France. During this time, the frontier with Granada was practically ignored; the Castilians did not even bother to ask for or obtain reparation for a raid in 1477. Truces were agreed upon in 1475, 1476, and 1478. In 1479, the Succession War concluded with Isabella victorious. As Isabella had married Ferdinand of Aragon in 1469, this meant that the two powerful kingdoms of Castile and Aragon would stand united, free from the inter-Christian strife which had allowed the Emirate of Granada to survive.[6]

Maps of the Iberian peninsula and Granada in the 14th–15th centuries

The five kingdoms of Iberia in 1360. The territory of the Emirate of Granada was reduced by 1482, as it lost its grasp on Gibraltar and other western territories.

Territory of the Nasrid dynasty during the 15th century. In light green are territories conquered by the Christian kings during the 13th century, including Ceuta on the African coast.

The most notable facet of the Granada War was the power of bombards and cannons to greatly shorten the many sieges of the war.[17] The Castilians and Aragonese started the war with only a few artillery pieces, but Ferdinand had access to French and Burgundian experts from his recent wars, and the Christians aggressively increased their artillery forces.[18] The Muslims, however, lagged far behind in their use of artillery, generally only using the occasional captured Christian piece.[19] The historian Weston F. Cook Jr. wrote "Gunpowder firepower and artillery siege operations won the Granadan war, and other factors in the Spanish victory were actually secondary and derivative."[20] By 1495, Castile and Aragon controlled 179 pieces of artillery total, a vast increase from the paltry numbers seen in the War of the Castilian Succession.[21]

Primitive arquebuses also saw use in the war, though only to a small degree.[21] Heavy cavalry knights were a much smaller factor in the Granada War than seen in earlier warfare.[22] Light cavalry jinetes took on a more prominent role instead. The open-field battles in which cavalry were the most important were rare; the Granadans, badly outnumbered, generally avoided such battles.[23] The Castilians also employed a large number of supporting men; a huge force of workers were mustered in 1483 to destroy crops and pillage the countryside rather than engage directly in battle.[17] Coordination and logistics was difficult given the mountainous terrain, but the Christians diligently built a series of roads through the mountains to deliver food and supplies to their troops.

Politically, many nobles insisted on controlling their own forces, but Ferdinand and Isabella were still able to exercise a large degree of control in directing the army as a whole. The Granadans, meanwhile, were beset with civil war, preventing the establishment of a unified command.[21] The Christian army was almost completely Castilian; Aragonese and foreign mercenary participation was minimal.[24] Of the Castilian army, Andalusia contributed far more troops than the other territories, with much of its population conscripted into the war. The nobility provided the majority of the expensive cavalry.[24]

Concerning the real strength of the armies involved, according to original sources the Castilian armies reached between 50,000 and 70,000 soldiers the years of the greatest military effort (1482, 83, 86, 87, 89 and 91), or 10,000 to 29,000 in the quieter ones (1484, 85, 88, and 90), strength which is accepted by modern scholars as Ladero Quesada.[25] Nevertheless, according to García de Gabiola, to keep, pay and feed armies of such strength was beyond the resources of the recently birthed modern states. For the campaigns in Italy (1494–1503) the Spanish armies were of 5,000, 9,000 or 15,000 men maximum, so it is rather surprising the numbers recorded 5–10 years before for Granada. If we take into account the revenues of Castile during the period (130 to some 200 million maravedies per year) it is hardly plausible that Castile could have organized more than 8,000 to 20,000 soldiers.[26] In fact, Ladero Quesada register the number of grain loads contracted by Castile in several years and García de Gabiola has calculated the number of soldiers that could have been fed through these grain loads, and his conclusions are 12,000 men for 1482 (siege of Loja); 8,000 men for 1483 and 1484 (Granada fields sacking); 10,000 men in 1485 (Ronda siege); 10–12,000 soldiers in 1486 (2nd Loja siege); 12,000 for 1487 (Malaga siege); 10–12,000 in 1488 (1st Baza siege); 20,000 soldiers in 1489 (2nd Baza siege, the greatest grain loads contracted, that also coincides with the largest revenue of Castile during the campaign, some 200 million); and 10–12,000 men for 1490–91 (final siege of Granada). A 20% of them should be cavalry.[27]

In relation to Muslim armies, according to García de Gabiola,[28] the strengths mentioned by the sources (15,000 to 50,000 infantry, or 4,500–7,000 cavalry) should also be discarded. More plausible strengths mentioned are the 3,000 horses (1482), 1,000 to 1,500 (1483, 1485 and 1487) or even 3-400 riders (1489 and 1491). Concerning the infantry, De Miguel Mora states that a Muslim soldier captured by the Castilians during the siege of Baza confessed that the real infantry strength of the garrison was 4,000 men and not 15,000.[29] So, the Muslim armies could not exceed some 4,000 infantry. At the end of the war, the ratio was 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 in favor of the Castilian armies.

The Granada War would prove to be valuable training for the Italian Wars, where the Castilian armies and tactics such as the tercio would acquit themselves well.[30]

The Surrender of Granada, by Vicente Barneto y Vazquez

The surrender of Granada was seen as a great blow to Islam and a triumph of Christianity. Other Christian states offered their sincere congratulations to Ferdinand and Isabella, while Islamic writers reacted with despair. In Castile and Aragon, celebrations and bullfights were held. People rejoiced in the streets.[31] For Christendom, the wresting of Granada from Islamic rule was seen as a counterbalance to the loss of Constantinople at the hands of the Ottoman Turks forty years prior.[32]

The treaty's terms for Granada's surrender were quite generous to the Muslims, considering how little they had left to bargain with.[33] They were similar to the terms offered to towns which surrendered earlier, when the outcome of the war was in doubt. For three years, Muslims could emigrate and return freely. They were allowed to keep weapons, though not firearms, a provision that however was to be annulled a month later. No one would be forced to change religion, not even former Christians who had converted to Islam. Boabdil was offered money and the rulership of a small principality in the mountainous Alpujarras, an area that would have been difficult to control in any case.[33] At first, most of conquered Granada was treated respectfully and was therefore predominantly stable for seven years, though the Alhambra Decree of 1492 expelled the Jews that were not converso Marranos.

King Boabdil soon found his position intolerable. He left for Morocco in October 1493, where he would die some forty years later.[34] Eventually, Castile started to revoke some of the more tolerant attributes of the treaty. This initiative was led by Archbishop Cisneros, who ordered mass conversions, the burning of valuable Arabic manuscripts and other measures detrimental to the Muslims (and Jews).[34]

This sparked a revolt that ended in many Muslims being forced to choose between baptism, exile, or execution. Tensions from then onward would remain high, and Castile was obliged to maintain a large military force in Granada to deter future revolts. Isabella also strengthened the Spanish Inquisition, and Ferdinand brought the Inquisition to Aragon where previously it had not held power.

Castile was the main beneficiary of the war, as it had also spent by far the majority of the money and manpower to prosecute it, and completely annexed Granada. The conquest of Granada meant little for Aragon's strategic position, but it did help secure Castilian support in Italy and France, where Aragon's interests lay.[35] The task of funding the war was formidable; the total cost was estimated to be 450,000,000 maravedies.[36]

Increasing oppression of the Moors—now known as Moriscos or "New Christians"—led to the Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1568–71). After the defeat of the Moors, which was not easy, almost all the Moriscos of the former Kingdom of Granada were exiled to other parts of Spain.

An entire genre, romances fronterizos, developed around stories of the war and the battles on the Granadan frontier which reached their culmination in Granada's fall. Ginés Pérez de Hita wrote an early example of historical fiction, Guerras civiles de Granada, a romantic account of the war that emphasized chivalry and heroism on both sides. A number of stories and songs appear to have been sponsored by the royal government to help steel morale for the long struggle; Sobre Baza was a poem written in 1479 encouraging persistence in the long siege. The song "Setenil, ay Setenil", written in 1484, hoped that Ferdinand would conquer "as far as Jerusalem."[37] The song "Una sañosa porfía" by Juan del Encina puts the depiction of the war in the lips of King Boabdil himself.

Spanish Baroque playwright Calderon de la Barca wrote a play concerning the Conquest of Granada entitled Amar despues de la Muerte. It was translated as Love After Death in 1853 by Denis Florence McCarthy, and again by Roy Campbell in 1959 (see List of Calderón's plays in English translation). English playwright John Dryden wrote a heroic drama The Conquest of Granada, published in 1672, which focuses on a romantic love triangle and clashing loyalties in two feuding Granadan factions, leaving the besieging Castilians in the background.

The Día de la Toma de Granada is a civic and religious festival held each year in Granada on the anniversary of the city's conquest, January 2. In the 21st century, parties of the left have criticised and boycotted the date, instead proposing that Granada's festival be that of Mariana Pineda, a 19th-century heroine.[38][39] In 2019 and 2020, the party PP celebrated the event, also attended by Vox and the group Hogar Social, distributing Spanish flags, with attendees chanting in praise of Spanish identity, while other groups such as the Revolutionary Anticapitalist Left turned out to oppose the celebration altogether, labelling the conquest a genocide.[40] During the celebration, the Spanish Legion marches with its music band; it has become a rallying point for far-right and nationalist groups that have sparked incidents in late years. The Spanish Socialists shifted their position from removing the celebration to adding also Moor parading as a sign of "cultural encounter".[41]

• Timeline of the Muslim presence in the Iberian peninsula § Castile-Aragón conquers the kingdom of Granada (1481–1491)
• Islam in Spain
• Morisco Rebellions in Granada
• Border of Granada

• Benito Ruano, Eloy. "Un cruzado inglés en la Guerra de Granada", Anuario de estudios medievales, 9 (1974/1979), 585–593.
• Cristobal Torrez Delgado. El Reino Nazari de Granada, 1482–92 (1982).
• De Miguel Mora, Carlos. La Toma de Baza (PDF).
• García de Gabiola, Javier. La Guerra que puso fin al Medievo: Granada (1482–92). Revista Medieval nº 55. 2015. Ed. Gram Nexo. Archived from the original on 2018-08-25. Retrieved 2016-03-11.
• García de Gabiola, Javier. La Genesis del estado moderno: Granada (1482–92). Medievalia nº 45. 2015. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
• García de Gabiola, Javier. Todo empezó en Granada. Historia de Iberia Vieja. nº 116.
• Hillgarth, J. N. (1978). The Spanish Kingdoms: 1250–1516. Volume II: 1410–1516, Castilian Hegemony. Oxford: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press. pp. 367–393. ISBN 0-1982-2531-8.
• Irving, Washington (1829). Conquest of Granada From the Manuscript of Fray Antonio Agapida. New York: A. L. Burt. (Republished in 2002 by Simon Publications, ISBN 1-9315-4180-9)
• Ladero Quesada, Miguel Ángel. La Guerra de Granada. Granada Dip. 2001.
• Ladero Quesada, Miguel Ángel. La Hermandad de Castilla. Real Academia de la Historia. 2005.
• Prescott, William H. (1995). Albert D. McJoynt (ed.). The Art of War in Spain: The Conquest of Granada, 1481–1492. London: Greenhill Books. ISBN 1-8536-7193-2. (An extract from Prescott's 1838 book History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic, updated with modern scholarship and commentary.