The Last Emirate of Spain
The emirate of Granada – Islam’s last polity in Spain – was surrendered to the Catholic monarchs on 2 January 1492.
By the late 15th century the Nasrid emirate of Granada, Islam’s last foothold in Spain, stretched from Seville in the west to Vera in the east, and south from Córdoba to the straits of Gibraltar. Granada, an Egyptian traveller said, was ‘one of the greatest and most beautiful cities of the west’.
But the emirate was in trouble. ‘The soil is poor for … grain and little suited to … vegetables’, Ibn Khaldun wrote. Food was imported from the Maghreb, mostly by Genoese merchants. Taxes were three times higher than in Christian Castile. But it still took a decade to conquer.
In its favour were its defences: a chain of castles, just five or six miles apart, around its northern and western frontiers and, it was said, a network of 14,000 watchtowers. Against it, the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella brought some
180 siege guns.
The siege of the port city of Malaga, which ended in August 1487, was critical. Isabella herself rallied the troops. By the end, only Granada itself was left. Its last sultan, Muhammad XII, gave up its keys on 2 January 1492. Outside the city walls Christopher Columbus waited in the royal camp with the offer of new horizons to conquer.