Infidels: A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam

by Andrew Wheatcroft

  However, while historians’ preoccupation with the persecution of the Jews in the fifteenth century is understandable, it obscures the roots of the oppression suffered by the Muslim population in the following century. The Muslims were left out of the account, and to modern eyes it seems implausible that an attribution of blood taint—as Christ killers—could suddenly be applied to them in later years. It was well known that Islam had developed centuries after the death of Christ. Yet by a process of syllogistic argument Muslims too, stage by stage, acquired an ineradicable taint like the Jews. Did they not, so many Christians believed, worship the Antichrist, Mohammed, and had they not despoiled the Holy Land itself? Had the Jews not aided the Muslims and were Muslims not therefore as guilty as those who had actually killed him? So, while in the drive for purity of blood the main victims were Jews and Jewish converts, the Moors were usually yoked with them in the litanies of hatred.

  THE POSITION OF GRANADA, THE LAST NON-CHRISTIAN ENCLAVE IN the peninsula after the mid–thirteenth century, was in a permanent state of flux. Granada could become an ally or an enemy of the Christian realms with bewildering speed, as one faction or another took control either in the Christian kingdoms or in Granada itself. In Granada power shifted back and forth from one part of the royal family to another. One ruler, Mohammed IX “the Left-Handed,” took the throne on no fewer than four separate occasions. However, despite the instability of Granadine politics, the military might of the last Moorish state grew during the fifteenth century. While Castile, in particular, had begun to develop gunpowder weapons and a siege train with cannon and bombards, the Granadines concentrated on building a profusion of small fortified towns and peel towers. These could be used as bases for a type of highly mobile border warfare that was becoming increasingly prevalent along the frontier.

  Two styles of campaigning began to emerge from the 1400s. The Castilians with their superiority in weapons, money, and manpower could usually take even a strongly fortified citadel after a long siege. But not always. In 1407 the three great guns of Infante Ferdinand, son of King John II of Castile, had successfully breached the walls of the Granadine town of Zahara, and moved on to nearby Setenil. Here the guns were set up and battered the town day and night to such an extent that within a few weeks the Castilians had run out of stones to fire. Each knight and man-at-arms was thereafter given a daily quota of rocks to find to keep the guns from falling silent. But as autumn passed, the citizens continued to hold out, repairing the damage by night. By the end of October, Ferdinand had still not brought the city to the point of surrender and he did not want to be trapped over the winter in enemy territory, where the Granadine light cavalry (jinetes) could cut off his supply train. So the Christian besiegers withdrew in some disorder, to the taunts of the defenders on the walls.52

  The Granadine method of war depended on speed and mobility—classic border raiding. The jinetes had adapted the loose riding style of North Africa (which Géricault would later, to great effect, depict for the salons of nineteenth-century France). The horsemen rode small and lightly built stallions, bred for sure-footedness over rough and stony ground, and wore only light armor, usually chain mail or, at most, a light cuirass. Their offensive weapons were a bundle of throwing spears and a long sword, but many were also proficient in the use of a light but powerful crossbow, which they could fire and reload even while moving. They had perfected a tactic called kerr wa-farr, often used in the tribal battles of Morocco. They would attack, and then retreat, trying to draw their enemy after them. Against Christian cavalry this proved very effective, because the charge of heavy armored cavalry depended upon mass and impact for its success. Once separated from their “squadron” the Christian knights were easy targets for the jinetes. Indeed, to meet the challenge, the Castilian nobles whose lands bordered Granada began to employ light horsemen themselves.

  Conversely, in a battle where the Granadines fought in the static Castilian style, they invariably came off worst, as in an encounter near Lorca in 1452, where a raiding party returning to Granada with 40,000 head of livestock was caught by Christian knights.

  When they came in sight of one another, the Moors drew themselves up in battle array and the Christian knights did the same. The battle was so keenly fought that the Christians had to make three charges, but finally the Moors were beaten, and more than eight hundred of them killed; the Christians lost forty killed and two hundred wounded.

  The Christians’ leader, Alonso Fajardo, further took his revenge by mounting a raid on Lorca, where he slaughtered the Muslim inhabitants, and then on to a village on a high peak. He recorded laconically, “I took Mojacar where such great deeds were done that the streets ran with blood.”53 This raiding and skirmishing continued regardless of whether or not there was declared war between Granada and its neighbors, winter and summer alike. Granadine bands ravaged up to the gates of Cartagena, while Miguel Lucas de Iranzo from Jaen burned towns only a few miles from Granada itself in retribution.

  Prophecy had always been popular in Christian Spain and settling the final account with Granada had long been expected. It was remembered that King Pelayo in his Asturian cave at Covadonga had foretold that God would eventually come to the aid of his people, and that was taken to mean that God willed the reconquest of Granada. But the omens that attached themselves to Prince Ferdinand and Princess Isabella, the heirs to Aragon and Castile respectively, exceeded those of the past. Many Castilians believed that Isabella the Catholic (La Católica) had been born miraculously, for the “redemption of lost kingdoms.” Others called her a second Virgin Mary.54 The conjuncture of the birth of a male heir to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1478, the settlement of the Castilian succession, and Ferdinand’s coming to the throne of Aragon generated still more prophecies. The salvation of the kingdom would be accomplished, and Spain would be restored as “one Christian nation, destined first for universal monarchy, and thereafter, for celestial hierarchy.”

  Ferdinand and Isabella were seen as the chosen agents of the divine plan. Their victory over evil, it was hoped, would have two aspects. The first was interior purity. A national council of the Spanish church was held in Seville in the summer of 1478 and declared a program for reform. In the autumn, Isabella and Ferdinand secured approval from Pope Sixtus for the appointment of inquisitors to serve in the realm of Castile. They began work in earnest in 1480, and between 1481 and 1488, thousands of “Judaizers,” heretics, and other enemies of Catholic Spain were “reconciled” to the church or relinquished to the state to be burned.55 The other aspect of this national purification was completing the holy work of the Reconquest. A popular poet, Fray Iñigo de Mendoza, proclaimed that the king and queen of Castile would end the abomination of Islamic rule in the peninsula.56 The old ideas of “imperial” Castile were revived, while prophecies appeared in Aragon that Ferdinand would drive the Moors completely from the land of Spain and, indeed, out of North Africa.57

  The idea of recapturing the entire peninsula from Muslim dominion was not the same as removing Moors from the face of Spain. For centuries, the communities had lived side by side, in varying political circumstances. Where under Islam the Christians and Jews were dhimmis, the protected but subordinate minorities within the state, in Christian Spain the Muslims now became feudal subordinates (or the slaves) of either king or some noble, who thereafter had responsibility for them. Granada was abominable not so much because it was filled with Muslims, but because it was a free and independent state, aggressively Muslim and endlessly fomenting intrigues with North Africa and pursuing border skirmishes with the Christians to the north. Even while a notional truce existed with the Granadines, Ferdinand and Isabella began to plan for a campaign against Granada, for, as they wrote to the pope, they were motivated not “by any desire to enlarge our realms but … hoping only that the Holy Catholic faith will be multiplied and that Christendom will be quit of so constant a danger as she has here at our very doors, if these infidels of the kingdom of Granada are not uprooted and cast ou
t from Spain.”58 Thus, while it was a Granadine attack on long-disputed Zahara on December 26, 1481, that became the casus belli, the plan for the final extirpation of Islamic rule in Spain had already been devised.

  However, the Kingdom of Granada was well defended, by both nature and military art. Every town and city was walled, and the frontier zone was studded with a profusion of stone-built peel towers which, if held by a determined garrison, could only be starved out or taken when the defenses had been breached by artillery. Centuries later, the American writer Washington Irving described the land as he first saw it:

  The ancient kingdom of Granada, into which we were about to penetrate, is one of the most mountainous regions of Spain. Vast sierras or chains of mountains, destitute of shrub or tree and mottled with variegated marbles and granites, elevate their sunburnt summits against a deep blue sky … In traversing these lofty sierras the traveller is often obliged to alight and lead his horse up and down the steep and jagged ascents and descents, resembling the broken steps of a staircase. Sometimes the road winds along dizzy precipices … [or] straggles through rugged barrancos or declivities, worn by winter torrents.59

  But once through the mountains, a different Granada appeared. There “lie engulfed the most verdant and fertile valleys, where desert and garden strain for mastery, and the very rock is, as it were, compelled to yield the fig, the orange and the citron, and to blossom with the myrtle and the rose.”60 The walled capital itself had, it was said, 1,030 turrets and seven great gates; inside was a population estimated at the beginning of the fourteenth century to be around 200,0. Above the city on a rocky outcrop stood the fortified palace of the Alhambra, with its citadel, the Alcazaba, and outside its perimeter wall, the summer palace, or Generalife. The splendors of the city gave rise to a little refrain: a citizen of Seville could assert

  El que no ha visto á Sevilla

  No ha visto maravilla.

  (He who has not seen Seville has not seen a marvel.)

  To which the Granadino would reply:

  El que no ha visto á Granada

  No ha visto de nada.

  (He who has not seen Granada has seen nothing at all.)

  The Kingdom of Granada was rich and productive. Ships from the eastern Mediterranean called at ports such as Malaga to purchase silks and other textiles, sugar, and fruit.61 Florence bought “Cordovan” leather. Unsurprisingly, the Holy Roman Emperor’s ambassador en route to Lisbon contrasted the refinement and elegance of Granada with the more rudimentary facilities of the Christian kingdoms.62 The pomegranate, Punica granata, was Granada’s eponymous emblem. For Muslim mystics the fruit, filled to bursting with tiny glistening seeds, signified the Garden of the Divine Essence, and represented the vast multiplicity of God’s creation.63 Christians like King Ferdinand knew nothing of this deeper symbolism. He once described his strategy for the conquest of Granada in the form of a pun: he would, he said, eat the seeds of the pomegranate one by one. But he tempted fate. Everyone knows that a pomegranate contains seeds in vast profusion. The joke rebounded, for the final act of the Reconquest took more than ten years to accomplish and then only at ruinous cost.

  The medieval battles of the Reconquista had largely been fought on terms that favored the Christian armies of the north.64 Even where they had suffered a catastrophe, as at Alarcos in 1195, it was usually the result of some tactical or strategic misjudgment, not of inferior numbers or resources. The war for Granada was no different. The nobles, towns, and cities of Castile were all summoned to provide their contingents of horsemen and men-at-arms, as in any medieval army. The military orders of Calatrava, Santiago, and Alcantara formed the professional and disciplined elite cavalry used to spearhead attacks. But beside them, drawn up in ranks with powder and projectiles carried in a line of carts, was a new element: a large number of artillery pieces designed to batter down the stone walls. Some of these were huge, much larger than those used with such success earlier in the century. Those deployed at the siege of Baza were twelve feet in length, with bores fourteen inches in diameter and firing a stone ball weighing over 175 pounds. These great guns could discharge only a single shot per hour, but few walls could stand up to steady fire. Yet they were not necessarily decisive. The defenders of Baza were not battered into submission, but simply ran out of food and ammunition.

  The Castilians were also overconfident. Their first success had been capturing the town of Alhama, in the heart of the Kingdom of Granada, by a bold surprise attack. Such a masterstroke could not be repeated. Their next assault, at the town of Loja in July 1482, a move designed to reinforce Alhama, was a disaster. Granadine jinetes swiftly overran the Christian positions, while Granadine crossbowmen picked off the more heavily armored and cumbersome Castilians. Few of the Christian troops had ever fought in the torrid climate and rough conditions of the south, while the Granadines had been hardened over generations of border warfare. A major Castilian advance on Malaga the following spring was ambushed in the wild mountains and deep ravines to the north of the city. Battered on every side, the grand master of the Order of Santiago, the premier order of Spanish chivalry, was supposed to have cried, “Oh God how great is Your anger this day against Your servants. You have changed the cowardice of these infidels into desperate valour, and have made peasants and serfs into men of valour.”65

  It was becoming clear that the war for Granada could be won only by slow and remorseless pressure.66 Staying clear of the high ground wherever possible, the Christian armies began to advance along the river valleys and flat plains that led eventually to the capital of Granada, beneath the Sierra Nevada. But all approach roads were heavily defended, and at each stronghold or fortified town the same drama was enacted. Setenil, north of Ronda, which the Castilians had failed to take in 1407, was carved out from the hill and was protected by a tower on the hill above it. The Castilian artillery was emplaced and slowly battered down the walls. Once the troops were able to enter, they slaughtered everyone left alive amid the rubble. At other sites, such as Benamquex in 1408, Ferdinand took a town by storm, and then hanged more than a hundred of the most prominent men of the town, suspending their bodies in a long line like a necklace over the walls. He enslaved the rest, men, women, and children. But the towns continued to resist stubbornly and the pace of advance grew slower. The capture on May 2, 1485, of Ronda, a fortress town built upon a sheer rocky outcrop above the river Guadalevín, turned the war in the Christians’ favor. Ronda could have held out longer, but a number of its leaders decided to surrender on favorable terms. Thereafter Ferdinand gave his enemies these options: death or enslavement to those who resisted; honeyed words and favors to those who surrendered their posts. The latter proved increasingly alluring as the long war continued.

  The Christian armies were now moving toward Granada from both the west and north. They were beaten back from Moclin, south of the Castilian frontier town of Alcala la Real. Moclin was another citadel built to take advantage of the lay of the land, making it a near-impregnable barrier to any advance along the main road to Granada.67 They failed to take it. But the long frontier meant that there were many other points of attack. Rebuffed from Moclin, the Christians probed again from farther east, and with much greater success. A large force moved south from Jaen to attack the twin fortresses of Cambil and Alhaber, which had been erected to protect the high road to Granada. Once again the Castilians laboriously maneuvered their heavy guns into position and shattered the old walls. They succeeded, and with the twin forts fallen, the last of Granada’s outer lines of defense had been pierced. By the summer of 1486, after four years of campaigning, Ferdinand’s front line rested at the “apple of Granada,” the fortress of Illora. In front of it lay the river Cubillas, crossed by a narrow bridge at the village of Piños Puente; and thence, for an ordinary traveler, it was less than half a day’s easy walk into the city of Granada itself.

  The greatest danger now lay not in the city before them but from behind. While the coastline was still in Muslim hands, the t
hreat of Moroccan or even Ottoman support for their Muslim brothers could not be discounted. The garrison of Malaga was largely made up of Berber volunteers from North Africa, eager to strike a blow against the infidels. Meanwhile the rulers of Granada sent a stream of envoys to seek support from any Muslim state that would come to their aid. However, neither the rulers of Morocco and Egypt nor the Ottoman sultan in Constantinople was willing or able to help them. Nonetheless, Ferdinand decided on a strategy that would cut off Granada from the ports along its southern flank, and then isolate the capital entirely. Granada’s best tactic was to attack each Castilian force in turn, relying on the fact that their speedy horsemen could move more easily from front to front. What ultimately doomed their defense was disunity. The royal family was split into numerous factions, intent on fighting one another rather than their external enemy. At times, one group held the city of Granada and besieged another in the Alhambra above. At other times some of the leading figures of Granada were in league with the Christians while others were struggling with them on the battlefield.

  While the Granadine aristocrats squabbled, the full weight of the Spanish siege train was marshaled against the port city of Malaga late in the spring of 1487.68 Soon more than 60,000 men were encamped around Malaga, with detachments from Germany, France, England, and many other parts of Europe. Every attempt by the besiegers to overcome the defense with siege towers and mining was frustrated by the Muslims. The historian of the War of Granada, Fernando de Pulgar, observed, “Who does not marvel at the bold heart of these infidels in battle, their prompt obedience to their chiefs, their dexterity in the wiles of war, their patience under privation and undaunted perseverance in their purposes.”69 The strength of their resistance made the Castilians fight for every yard of ground. Pulgar said that they seemed to have a greater desire to kill Christians than to preserve their own lives. On the Christian side the savagery of the fighting meant that a desire for vengeance predominated over the desire for financial gain. No one attempted to take prisoners. They wanted only to kill or maim. But as the siege was prolonged the townspeople began to starve. According to an Arabic source, when the food stocks ran out, “they had to eat whatever was edible: horses, asses, donkeys, dogs, skins, the leaves from trees,” and only then would they seek terms.70