But confirmed they were. In the course of the 1500s, the power of the Inquisition increased. And the doctrine of limpieza de sangre—blood purity—took on a central and defining importance. At the same time, the Morisco community’s knowledge of horticulture, irrigation, silk-weaving, construction, and commerce seemed less crucial, given the weighty current of gold and silver arriving from the New World. By 1567, in the Albayzín, the newly confirmed edicts began to be enforced without mercy. This time, no payment to a high official, nor any political deal, nor any advocacy could help. Rumors circulated that children of Moriscos would be taken from their families. The Albayzín churned with rumor, terror, bitterness, despair. The Moriscos assembled secretly, seeking a way to resist. Apocalypse was in the air. Such mad foreboding is almost always wrong. But not this time; soon, apocalypse was on the ground.
The Morisco community in the Albayzín, along with Morisco settlements in the Alpujarras, planned a campaign of armed resistance. Cautious souls voiced strong arguments against such a rebellion, but a doomed plan took form. By the end of 1568, the community, as though driven insane by seven decades of broken promises, confiscated property, forced conversions, book-burnings, and secret trials of the Inquisition, finally revolted and began a war that was to last two years. Called the Second Granada War (1568–1570), most of the fighting was in the Alpujarras, where the Christian armies, heavily armed and with pathetic, fractious leaders, fought mobile bands of Moriscos, poor and disorganized, with their own pathetic, fractious leaders. There were repellent massacres on both sides before the might of the Spanish military prevailed.
The Albayzín stood no chance. It was the biggest Morisco neighborhood in Granada. Granada symbolized the final conquest of Spain by Christian armies, and the city served as the center of power and religious authority for the whole region. In March of 1569, the authorities massacred all one hundred and ten Morisco prisoners held in the prison at the base of the neighborhood, near Plaza Nueva. Later that year, soldiers entered the Albayzín and tore it to pieces. There is no other way to say it.
Two companies of soldiers entered Plaza de Abad, in the heart of the barrio; another five hundred soldiers circled the neighborhood. In the attack, the troops entered and looted houses, then wrecked whatever was left of them. They plugged or poisoned the fountains, water troughs, and famous aljibes. They pillaged stocks of grain, destroyed the market stalls, stores, workshops. In the autumn of 1570, they seized all boys and men between the ages of 10 and 70 and imprisoned them in the churches, then later in a hospital. In total, the count of prisoners was about 4,000. Contemporary accounts record the scene:
It was a miserable show, to see so many men of different ages, with heads bowed, hands crossed, faces washed in tears, their demeanor wretched and sad, since they were leaving their cherished houses, their families, their way of life, their farms, and all the good that they had …
… they had only the most terrible lamentations, having known prosperity, the fine order and pleasure of their houses, carmenes, and orchards, where [they] had all their recreations and amusements, and within a few days they had seen everything laid waste and destroyed, for matters had come to such a bad end, that it seemed a good thing to subject [their] most happy city to just such destruction …
The Spanish army marched these men out of Granada and into the winter of 1570. Forcibly exiled, and now scattered around the country, mostly within Castile, we lose sight of most of them. We know that hundreds of them died of exposure on the forced march to their new towns. Of the fate of their wives and children, we know little, except that the youngest passed into the service of the so-called “Old Christians” of Granada.
In 1571, royal agents visited the Albayzín to inventory the houses and goods that remained, so that they might be formally confiscated and given to Christian families. They found, out of the many thousands of houses on this hillside, less than three hundred occupied. The livelihood of the workers lay buried in the rubble. The authorities had tried to keep in the barrio workers with knowledge of silk-weaving, orchards, and the water systems. Of the rich scope of skilled professions that had for so long enriched Granada, little remained. The birth rate, measured by baptisms, plummeted. And whatever the enticement offered by the Crown—the gift of confiscated houses, cheap rents, and the like—there were few takers. The population continued its decline, from its high in the 1400s of around forty-five thousand to twenty-seven thousand in 1561, then, after the sacking of the barrio, falling disastrously. Some observers of the time doubted the survival of the Albayzín.
KING SOLOMON COMES TO THE ALBAYZÍN
But then in 1595, at the edge of the barrio, came an event so improbable that it is small praise to call it a miracle: a discovery that bid fair to make Granada into a worldwide center of Christian pilgrimage and worship, and at the same time bring Christian practice into closer alignment with the worship of Allah.
Just at the eastern edge of the Albayzín, an excavation brought to light a series of strange oval leaden tablets, all with Arabic writing. Many of the tablets bore the Seal of Solomon. Often, the excavators found bones and ashes near the tablets. Over the next four years, there were more discoveries in the same district, until about two dozen tablets in all had been collected. They had magnetic titles like “Book of the Truth of the Gospels,” “On the Nature of Angels and Their Power,” “The Book of the Ceremonies of Jesus and Mary,” “On the Essence of God,” and “The Book of the Maxims of Saint Mary.” The ecclesiastical authorities in Granada examined the tablets and declared them to be authentic writings from the first century, an inconceivably precious treasure. They held in their hands new books of Holy Scripture and actual accounts of conversations of the Apostles. Most electrifying of all, the tablets held declarations and guidance in the beautiful voice of the Blessed Virgin Mary herself. We hear Mary giving answers to Peter, addressing in detail the subtleties of belief and the secrets of the soul.
The findings transfixed the church in Granada. Here, in their own town, a stunning addition to the New Testament had come to light. The texts supported the Immaculate Conception of Mary, a doctrine held intensely in Granada. They roiled Catholic Europe and aroused lively interest in Protestant Europe. The archbishop of Granada, leading a synod, lent his unqualified support to the texts and the relics that accompanied them. As late as 1609, a royal commission that had the king’s confessor, a cardinal, the Inquisitor General, and other august members was found in favor of the relics and did not disavow the text of the lead tablets.
Despite the boisterous support of Granada’s Catholics, the lead books had certain oddities that one might think would have made their interpreters dubious. For one thing, the Virgin Mary and Saint Peter spoke in Arabic. For another, the lead books omitted any reference to Jesus as the Son of God; he was, rather, the Spirit of God. Curious statements abound in the text, such as “There is no God but Allah, and the Messiah is the Spirit of Allah. The whole book is the truth of the Messiah Jesus.” And there is much else, all of it tending, like lines in a drawing to establish perspective, to a single point. The point was that the theological content of the lead books did away with elements in Catholic doctrine that Muslims could not accept; yet at the same time, the books affirmed the divine knowledge of Jesus and the transcendental importance of Mary. It was, at the last moment, a gambit to bring Islam and Christianity into more concord, so as to revive at least some part of the convivencia—the coexistence of Christians and Muslims—now in its death throes in Spain. What bold dreamer could have come up with so game, wild, and sweeping a strategy? Probably a converted Muslim, living in Granada and protected by his value to the realm. Whoever he was, he tried something magnificent: to divert singlehandedly the whole current of history and send it off in a more peaceable direction.
Ironically, the core point is not far from the position of the Arian Christians throughout the Mediterranean and the Arian Visigoths of Spain. Both the lead books and Arian theology hold that Jesus, rather than
being divine, was divinely inspired. So we have a bizarre continuity in Spain, played out in our very own Albayzín, that runs from the religious devotion of Visigothic kings of the fourth century to mystical lead tablets found in the sixteenth century, bearing the words of Mary the mother of Jesus.
The Vatican was having none of it. Just as the Arians had been destroyed, so the church weighed in with its dissent and control. The church let the pandemonium die down and finally banned any talk about the texts in 1682.
In the meantime, the Spanish monarchy had followed up its expulsion in 1492 of the Jews with the formal expulsion, in 1609, of the remaining Moriscos in Spain. It was the final trump of Christianity and the last step in the dismantling of Al-Andalus.
THE SEVERAL CENTURIES OF DECOMPOSITION
What did this mean for the Albayzín? The population continued its eclipse. By 1620, only six thousand people lived in the Albayzín, less than a sixth of its population in 1492. The Crown had tried to repopulate the barrio and rescue its economy. Its efforts melted away into failure, to the point where we read of the nuns of the convent of Santa Isabel, in the heart of the barrio, writing to Philip II for aid. They wrote because they were dying of hunger.
One historian writes that the Albayzín had suffered
… a radical depopulation, given the scarcity of Old Christians living there, and the total desolation of the urban space that had in large measure sustained over centuries the wealth and prestige of the city of Granada.
Reports to the King in the seventeenth century conclude that
… the rents from the property confiscated from the Moriscos cannot make up for the depopulation caused by the massive deportation of the Morisco community, given the current lack of revenue, and the difficulty and the fall in agricultural yield … so that neither the conservation of the cropland, nor the systems of irrigation, nor the houses themselves can be guaranteed; on the contrary, they now are falling into abandon and ruin …
Spain was, during this period, ruling a considerable portion of Europe and the New World. But empire did not translate into prosperity for the people of Spain. The tonnage of gold and silver that arrived from the colonies funded military adventures, the violent defense and promotion of the True Faith, and the payment of vast debt incurred to carry on with such escapades.
In the Albayzín, especially the part nearest the Darro River, Old Christian families received grants of land and constructed seigniorial houses. In the rest of the barrio, the mosques had become churches, and the hospital was converted into a monastery. Convents received important real estate, including part of the old Moorish palace where the mother of Boabdil, the last king of Granada, had lived. Most of these convents were cloistered, that is, closed to all the world, save the priests. Scraggly plants took root in the rubble. So the Albayzín became a barrio of rubble, silence, hidden nuns, fierce churches, tormented memory, and poverty.
THE CENTURIES OF Spanish empire ran forward, with their wealth and power—and the grotesque squandering of that wealth and power. Arriving in the middle of the nineteenth century, what did the Albayzín look like? Here is the report of Lady Louisa Tenison, an English traveler:
Many are the curious old houses in the Albaycin, which still bear traces of their Moorish origin. The palaces of the Moorish chieftains are now the wretched habitations of the poorest inhabitants of Granada, and squalid ragged children people the patios … The population is gradually diminishing, and within the last few years many of the houses in the quarter have been pulled down, their owners finding the ground more profitable when converted into gardens.
Or the simple declaration of a Spanish geographer and statistician:
… almost all of this opulent barrio of the Arabs has been converted into a pile of ruins.
Some superb buildings from the Middle Ages had survived, notably the Maristan, the hospital in the lower Albayzín, whose site was just below our carmen. In the middle 1800s, the city pulled it down. Around the same time, the Darro, where it enters Plaza Nueva at the foot of the Albayzín, was paved over. The river, enclosed in a tunnel, was channeled through the center of the city. This dismal decision was accompanied by massive demolition to drive a grand avenue through the city, cutting between the Albayzín and the city center. Ingeniously, the avenue impoverished the Albayzín even further, which was tough to do. The poor who lived in the demolished buildings were thrown out, and the city built showy apartments befitting such a grand throughway. They made Granada look less Andalusian and more like any other European city of the time. Moreover, the money, the commerce, and the holy attentions of the Catholic church went downtown, on the other side of the new and noble avenue.
Having nowhere else to go, more of the displaced poor moved to the Albayzín, into ruined houses, abandoned patios, makeshift rooms, caves. They lived among the nuns and a few country houses of the affluent families of Granada. The Albayzín, as its buildings crumbled, was turning back into land for orchards and cropland. What had been the historic beginning and center of Granada became now, improbably, the country. It being the country, some of the well-to-do families began restoring or building houses: the first carmenes in the Albayzín. It was a perfect fit, since carmenes were the classic country houses of Al-Andalus. And since the revival of romantic interest in the Alhambra was now underway, beautiful geometric tiles were introduced to new carmenes, horseshoe arches, or decorative woodwork. In our own house, whose deeds go back to 1862, in the room we call the cuarto arabe, we find the Star of David and tiles with Arabic script praising Allah, and, surrounding one window, tiny columns that turned out to be replicas of columns in the famous Patio de los Leones of the Alhambra. Someone had done a lot of homework.
WE ARRIVE IN the 1920s. The Albayzín, heart of Granada, with a heritage of more than two and half millennia, once full of palaces and families, bathhouses and bakeries, silk-weavers and gardeners and potters, cynosure of the beauties of Al-Andalus—this barrio falls, abused and forgotten, into a new century. All its history is present, yet darkly, as a mood of blood and wonder. We are fortunate to have the observations of the poet Frederico García Lorca, from the 1920s. He is a famously close and lyrical observer, so let us quote him at length:
The streets are narrow, with strange broken-down stairways, like undulating tentacles that twist wearily, capriciously, and lead to dead ends whence we see the tremendous snowy peaks of the Sierras, or the splendid, definitive harmony of the Vega. In some parts the streets are like strange pathways of fear and ominous disquiet, bound in by walls blanketed with jasmine … We hear the barking of dogs, and distant voices calling someone in tones of hopeless sensuality. The streets are like whirlpools, with stairways impossible to climb, full of big rough stones, walls eaten by time; on the stairs sit tragic and dumbstruck women, looking brazenly around …
… Leaving aside the mutilations suffered by the barrio at the hands of some granadinos (if we may call them that), it has kept its special mood. To walk through its streets is to be in a stage set for legend.
… the people of these parts, so sensitive and fearful, invent stories about the dead and the ghosts of winter, spirits and hobgoblins who go out in the middle of moonless nights … Muttering old women and roving prostitutes see them, and talk about them later, frightened and superstitious. In this crisscrossing of streets lives an Albayzín timorous and fantastic, with howling of dogs and sorrowful guitars, dark nights among white walls; the tragic, superstitious Albayzín, with its witches casting spells and using black magic, its strange gypsy ceremonies, its cabalistic signs and amulets; with souls in agony, and pregnant women, and old prostitutes who know the evil eye, and bloody curses, and passion and seduction.
Here also are streets with cloistered convents, white, simple, with their blunt belltowers and high dusty windows, touching the eaves with their swallows and dove’s nests … streets that hear the silvery melodies of the Darro, and the romances sung by the moving leaves of the forest of the Alhambra. This is the Albayzín romantic
, distinguished, lovely, the Albayzín of gateways into carmenes and to the grounds of convents like Santa Isabel; the Albayzín of fountains, arbors, cypresses, decorated ironwork, full moons, ancient music, the Albayzín of abundance, organs playing in convents, of Arab patios, of big pianos, roomy salons thick with the scent of lavender.
Here is a tragedy of contrasts. On one solitary street is heard a convent organ playing sweetly, and the divine salutation of an Ave Maria said in softly feminine voices. Across from the convent, a man in a blue shirt curses shockingly, as he feeds his goats. Further on, some prostitutes with dark circles under jet-black eyes, their bodies awkward and deformed by lust, give vent in harsh voices to obscenities of magnificent vulgarity; next to them a delicate little girl in rags sings a pious song of the nuns.
All of this lets us know an atmosphere of infinite anguish, streets on which an oriental curse has fallen.
… There is a strong smell of earth, of moisture, incense, wine, billy goats, urine, dung, honeysuckle …
García Lorca spent time, in the next years, in a beautiful carmen—called the Carmen de Alonso Cano—just up the hill from where we live. It’s a classic, with a big, terraced, south-facing garden, and at the back a tall house with big windows looking out toward the Alhambra. In that carmen, he drank the fresh, remarkable sparkling water from the mountain spring called Aynadamar. Near that very spring, a few years later, early one dawn in August, Spanish fascists would murder him. And his books would be banned. But that is another story.
Writing here in the barrio at this juncture in its history, I would dearly like to tell my readers that the rotting Albayzín began to recover its heritage and wake up to the millennium of beauties hidden under the rubble. Instead, things got worse, as though history held some leering, fateful grudge against this place.
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