Template:Wp-Granada-History

Watchers
the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Contents

Pre-Umayyad history

The region surrounding what today is Granada has been populated since at least 5500 BC. Archeological artifacts found in the city indicate that the site of the city, including the area around the present-day avenue of Gran Vía de Colón, was inhabited since the Bronze Age. The most ancient ruins found in the area belong to an oppidum called Ilturir, founded by the Iberian Bastetani tribe around 650 BC. The name Elibyrge is also attested in reference to this area. This settlement became later known as Iliberri or Iliberis.[1] In 44 BC Iliberis became a Roman colony and in 27 BC it became a Roman municipium named Florentia Iliberritana ('Flourishing Iliberri').[1]

The identification of present-day Granada with the Roman-era Iliberis and the historical continuity between the two settlements has long been debated by scholars. Modern archeological digs on the Albaicín hill have uncovered finds demonstrating the presence of a significant Roman town on that site. Little is known, however, about the history of the city in the period between the end of the Roman era and the 11th century. An important Christian synod circa 300 AD, the Synod of Elvira, took place near this area (the name Elvira being derived from the name Iliberri), but there is no concrete archeological or documentary evidence establishing the exact location of the meeting. It may have taken place in the former Roman town or it may have taken place somewhere in the surrounding region, which was known as Elvira.

Founding and early history

The Umayyad conquest of Hispania, starting in AD 711, brought large parts of the Iberian Peninsula under Moorish control and established al-Andalus. The earliest Arabic historical sources mention that a town named Qashtīliya, later known as Madīnat Ilbīra (Elvira), was located on the southern slopes of the Sierra de Elvira mountains (near present-day Atarfe) and became the most important settlement in the area.[2] A smaller settlement and fortress (ḥiṣn) named Ġarnāṭa (also transliterated as Gharnāṭa) existed on the south side of the Darro River or on the site of the current Albaicín neighbourhood. The latter had a mainly Jewish population and thus was also known as Gharnāṭat al-Yahūd ("Gharnāṭa of the Jews").[3] The district around the city was known as Kūrat Ilbīra (roughly "Province of Elvira"). After 743 the town of Ilbīra was settled by soldiers from the region of Syria who played a role in supporting Abd al-Rahman I, the founder of the Emirate of Córdoba and a new Umayyad dynasty.[3] In the late 9th century, during the reign of Abdallah (r. 844–912), the city and its surrounding district were the site of conflict between muwallads (Muslim converts) who were loyal to the central government and Arabs, led by Sawwār ibn Ḥamdūn, who resented them.[3]

At the beginning of the 11th century, the area became dominated by the Zirids, a Sanhaja Berber group and offshoot of the Zirids who ruled parts of North Africa. This group became an important contingent in the army of ʿAbd al-Malik al-Muẓaffar, the prime minister of Caliph Hisham II (r. 976–1009) and successor to Ibn Abi ʿAmir al-Mansur (Almanzor) as de facto ruler of the Caliphate of Córdoba. For their service, the Zirids were granted control of the province of Elvira.[3] When the Caliphate collapsed after 1009 and the Fitna (civil war) began, the Zirid leader Zawi ben Ziri established an independent kingdom for himself, the Taifa of Granada. Arab sources such as al-Idrisi consider him to be the founder of the city of Granada.[3] His surviving memoirs – the only ones for the Spanish "Middle Ages" – provide considerable detail for this brief period. Because Madīnat Ilbīra was situated on a low plain and, as a result, difficult to protect from attacks, the ruler decided to transfer his residence to the higher situated area of Ġarnāṭa. According to Arabic sources Ilbīra was razed during the Fitna, afterwards it was not restored at its previous place and instead Ġarnāṭa, the former Jewish town, replaced it as the main city. In a short time this town was transformed into one of the most important cities of al-Andalus. Until the 11th century it had a mixed population of Christians, Muslims, and Jews.

The Zirids built their citadel and palace, known as the al-Qaṣaba al-Qadīma ("Old Citadel"), on the hill now occupied by the Albaicín neighborhood.[3][4] It was connected to two smaller fortresses on the Sabika hill (site of the future Alhambra) and Mauror hill to the south.[4] The city around it grew during the 11th century to include the Albaicín, the Sabika, the Mauror, and a part of the surrounding plains. The city was fortified with walls encompassing an area of approximately 75 hectares.[3] The northern part of these walls, near the Albaicin citadel, have survived to the present day, along with two of its gates: Bāb al-Unaydar (now called Puerta Monaita in Spanish) and Bāb al-Ziyāda (now known as Arco de las Pesas or Puerta Nueva).[4][3] The city and its residences were supplied with water through an extensive network of underground cisterns and pipes.[3][5] On the Darro River, along the wall connecting the Zirid citadel with the Sabika hill, was a sluice gate called Bāb al-Difāf ("Gate of the Tambourines"), which could be closed or opened to control the flow of the river and retain water if necessary. The nearby Bañuelo, a former hammam (bathhouse), also likely dates from this time, as does the former minaret of a mosque in the Albaicín, now part of the Church of San José.[4]

Under the Zirid kings Habbus ibn Maksan and Badis, the most powerful figure was the Jewish administrator known as Samuel ha-Nagid (in Hebrew) or Isma'il ibn Nagrilla (in Arabic). Samuel was a highly educated member of the former elites of Cordoba, who fled that city after the outbreak of the Fitna. He eventually found his way to Granada, where Habbus ibn Maksan appointed him his secretary in 1020 and entrusted him with many important responsibilities, including tax collection. Under Badis, he even took charge of the army. During this period, the Muslim king was looked upon as a mainly symbolic figurehead. Granada was the center of Jewish Sephardi culture and scholarship. According to Daniel Eisenberg:


After Samuel's death, his son Joseph took over after his position but proved to lack his father's diplomacy, bringing on the 1066 Granada massacre,[6] which ended the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain.

From the late 11th century to the early 13th century, Al-Andalus was dominated by two successive North African Berber empires. The Almoravids ruled Granada from 1090 and the Almohads from 1166. Evidence from the artistic and archeological remains of this period suggest that the city thrived under the Almoravids but declined under the Almohads.[4] Remnants of the Almohad period in the city include the Alcázar Genil, built in 1218–1219 (but later redecorated under the Nasrids), and possibly the former minaret attached to the present-day Church of San Juan de los Reyes in the Albaicin.

Nasrid Emirate of Granada

In 1228 Idris al-Ma'mun, the last effective Almohad ruler in al-Andalus, left the Iberian Peninsula. As Almohad rule collapsed local leaders and factions emerged across the region. With the Reconquista in full swing, the Christian kingdoms of Castile and Aragon – under kings Ferdinand III and James I, respectively – made major conquests across al-Andalus. Castile captured Cordoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248. Meanwhile, the ambitious Ibn al-Ahmar (Muhammad I) established what became the last and longest reigning Muslim dynasty in the Iberian peninsula, the Nasrids, who ruled the Emirate of Granada. On multiple occasions Ibn al-Ahmar aligned himself with Ferdinand III, eventually agreeing to become his vassal in 1246. Granada thereafter became a tributary state to the Kingdom of Castile, although this was often interrupted by wars between the two states.[3] The political history of the emirate was turbulent and intertwined with that of its neighbours. The Nasrids sometimes provided refuge or military aid to Castilian kings and noblemen, even against other Muslim states, while in turn the Castilians provided refuge and aid to some Nasrid emirs against other Nasrid rivals. On other occasions the Nasrids attempted to leverage the aid of the North African Marinids to ward off Castile, although Marinid interventions in the Peninsula ended after Battle of Rio Salado (1340).[3]

The population of the emirate was also swelled by Muslim refugees from the territories newly conquered by Castile and Aragon, resulting in a small yet densely-populated territory which was more uniformly Muslim and Arabic-speaking than before. The city itself expanded and new neighbourhoods grew around the Albaicín (named after refugees from Baeza) and in Antequeruela (named after refugees from Antequera after 1410). A new set of walls was constructed further north during the 13th–14th centuries, with Bab Ilbirah (present-day Puerta de Elvira) as its western entrance.[3][4] A major Muslim cemetery existed outside this gate. The city's heart was its Great Mosque (on the site of the present-day Granada Cathedral) and the commercial district known as the qaysariyya (the Alcaicería).[3][4] Next to this was the only major madrasa built in al-Andalus, the Madrasa al-Yusufiyya (known today as the Palacio de la Madraza), founded in 1349. Other monuments from this era include the al-Funduq al-Jadida ("New Inn" or caravanserai, now known as the Corral del Carbón), built in the early 14th century, the Maristan (hospital), built in 1365–1367 and demolished in 1843, and the main mosque of the Albaicín, dating from the 13th century.

When Ibn Al-Ahmar established himself in the city he moved the royal palace from the old Zirid citadel on the Albaicín hill to the Sabika hill, beginning construction on what became the present Alhambra.[3] The Alhambra acted as a self-contained palace-city, with its own mosque, hammams, fortress, and residential quarters for workers and servants. The most celebrated palaces that survive today, such as the Comares Palace and the Palace of the Lions, generally date from the reigns of Yusuf I (r. 1333–1354) and his son Muhammad V (r. 1354–1391, with interruptions). Some smaller examples of Nasrid palace architecture in the city have survived in the Cuarto Real de Santo Domingo (late 13th century) and the Dar al-Horra (15th century).Partly due to the heavy tributary payments to Castile, Granada's economy specialized in the trade of high-value goods.[3] Integrated within the European mercantile network, the ports of the kingdom fostered intense trading relations with the Genoese, but also with the Catalans, and to a lesser extent, with the Venetians, the Florentines, and the Portuguese. It provided connections with Muslim and Arab trade centers, particularly for gold from sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb, and exported silk and dried fruits produced in the area.

Despite its frontier position, Granada was also an important Islamic intellectual and cultural center, especially in the time of Muhammad V, with figures such as Ibn Khaldun and Ibn al-Khatib serving in the Nasrid court.[7] Ibn Battuta, a famous traveller and historian, visited the Emirate of Granada in 1350. He described it as a powerful and self-sufficient kingdom in its own right, although frequently embroiled in skirmishes with the Kingdom of Castile. In his journal, Ibn Battuta called Granada the "metropolis of Andalusia and the bride of its cities."

End of Muslim rule and 16th-century changes

On 2 January 1492, the last Muslim ruler in Iberia, Emir Muhammad XII, known as "Boabdil" to the Spanish, surrendered complete control of the Emirate of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs (Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile), after the last episode of the Granada War.

The 1492 capitulation of the Kingdom of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs is one of the most significant events in Granada's history. It brought the demise of the last Muslim-controlled polity in the Iberian Peninsula. The terms of the surrender, outlined in the Treaty of Granada at the end of 1491, explicitly allowed the Muslim inhabitants, known as mudéjares, to continue unmolested in the practice of their faith and customs. This had been a traditional practice during Castilian (and Aragonese) conquests of Muslim cities since the takeover of Toledo in the 11th century. The terms of the surrender pressured Jewish inhabitants to convert or leave within three years, but this provision was quickly superseded by the Alhambra Decree, issued only a few months later on March 31, which instead forced all Jews in Spain to convert or be expelled within four months. Those who converted became known as conversos (converts). This move, along with the progressive erosion of other guarantees provided by the surrender treaty, raised tensions and fears within the remaining Muslim community during the 1490s. Many of the city's affluent Muslims and its traditional ruling classes emigrated to North Africa in the early years after the conquest, but these early emigrants numbered only a few thousand, with the rest of the population unable to afford leaving.

By 1499, Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros grew frustrated with the slow pace of the efforts of the first archbishop of Granada, Hernando de Talavera, to convert non-Christians and undertook a program of forced baptisms, creating the converso class for Muslims and Jews. Cisneros's new strategy, which was a direct violation of the terms of the treaty, provoked the Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1499–1501) centered in the rural Alpujarras region southeast of the city. The rebellion lasted until 1500 in Granada and continued until 1501 in the Alpujarras. Responding to the rebellion of 1501, the Crown of Castile rescinded the Treaty of Granada, and mandated that Granada's Muslims convert or emigrate. Many of the remaining Muslim elites subsequently emigrated to North Africa. The majority of the Granada's mudéjares converted (becoming the so-called moriscos or Moorish) so that they could stay. Both populations of converts were subject to persecution, execution, or exile, and each had cells that practiced their original religion in secrecy (the so-called marranos in the case of the conversos accused of the charge of crypto-Judaism).


Over the course of the 16th century, Granada took on an ever more Catholic and Castilian character, as immigrants arrived from other regions of Castile, lured by the promise of economic opportunities in the newly conquered city. At the time of the city's surrender in 1492 it had a population of 50,000 which included only a handful of Christians (mostly captives), but by 1561 (the year of the first royal census of the city) the population was composed of over 30,000 Christian immigrants and approximately 15,000 moriscos. After 1492 the city's first churches had been installed in some converted mosques. The vast majority of the city's remaining mosques were subsequently converted into churches during and after the mass conversions of 1500. In 1531, Charles V founded the University of Granada on the site of the former madrasa built by Yusuf I.[1]

Granada's Town Council did not fully establish until almost nine years after the Castilian conquest, upon the concession of the so-called 'Constitutive Charter' of the Ayuntamiento of Granada on 23 September 1500. From then on, the municipal institution became a crucible for the "Old Christian" and the converted morisco elites, resulting in strong factionalism, particularly after 1508. The new period also saw the creation of a number of other new institutions such as the Cathedral Cabildo, the , the Royal Chapel and the Royal Chancellery. For the rest of the 16th century the Granadan ruling oligarchy featured roughly a 40% of (Jewish) conversos and about a 31% of hidalgos. From the 1520s onward, the mosque structures themselves began to be replaced with new church buildings, a process which continued for most of the century. In December 1568, during a period of renewed persecution against moriscos, the Second Morisco Rebellion broke out in the Alpujarras. Although the city's morisco population played little role in the rebellion, King Philip II ordered the expulsion of the vast majority of the morisco population from the Kingdom of Granada, with the exception of those artisans and professionals judged essential to the economy. The expelled population was redistributed to other cities throughout the Crown of Castile. The final expulsion of all moriscos from Castile and Aragon was carried out between 1609 and 1614.

Later history and present day

During the 17th century, despite the importance of immigration, the population of the city stagnated at about 55,000, contrary to the trend of population increase experienced in the rural areas of the Kingdom of Granada, where the hammer of depopulation caused by the expulsion of the moriscos had taken a far greater toll in the previous century. The 17th-century demographic stagnation in the city and overall steady population increase in the wider kingdom went in line with the demographic disaster experienced throughout the century in the rest of the Crown of Castile. The city was overshadowed in importance by other cities including Seville and the capital, Madrid.

Between 1810 and 1812 Granada was occupied by Napoleon's army during the Peninsular War. The French troops occupied the Alhambra as a fortified position and caused significant damage to the monument. Upon evacuating the city, they attempted to dynamite the whole complex, successfully blowing up eight towers before the remaining fuses were disabled by Spanish soldier José Garcia, thus saving what remains today. In 1830 Washington Irving lived in Granada and wrote his Tales of the Alhambra, which revived some international interest in southern Spain and in its Islamic-era monuments.

In the 1930s the tensions that eventually divided Spain were evident in Granada, with frequent riots and friction between landowners and peasants. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Granada was one of the cities that joined the Nationalist uprising. There was local resistance against the Nationalists, particularly from the working classes in the Albaicín, which was violently repressed. During the 1950s and 1960s, under the Franco regime, the province of Granada was one of the poorest areas in Spain. In recent decades tourism has become a major industry in the city.