1492: The Year Our World Began by Felipe Fernández-Armesto Read Free Book Online Page A

after a disastrous action at Lucena.
    The Christians called Boabdil “the young king” from his nineteen years and “Boabdil the small” for his diminutive stature. His ingenuousness matched his youth and size. He had little bargaining power in negotiating for his release, and the terms to which he agreed amounted to a disaster for Granada. He recovered his personal liberty and obtained Ferdinand’s help in his bid to recover his throne. In return he swore vassalage. In itself, this might have been no great calamity, as Granada had always been a tributary kingdom. But Boabdil seems to have made the mistake of disbelieving Ferdinand’s rhetoric. Except as a temporary expedient, Ferdinand was unwilling to tolerate Granada’s continuing existence on any terms. Boabdil’s release was merely a strategy for intensifying Granada’s civil war and sapping the kingdom’s strength. The Spanish king had tempted Boabdil into unwilling collaboration in what Ferdinand himself called “the division and perdition of that kingdom of Granada.”
    Boabdil’s father resisted. So did his uncle, Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muhammad, known as el Zagal, in whose favor Hassan abdicated, while theChristians continued to make advances under cover of the Moorish civil war. Boabdil fell into Ferdinand’s hands a second time, and agreed to even harsher terms, promising to cede Granada to Castile and retain only the town of Guadix and its environs as a nominally independent kingdom. The Granadine royal family seems to have retreated into a bunker mentality, squabbling over an inheritance no longer worth defending. It is hard to believe that Boabdil can ever have intended to keep the agreement, or that Ferdinand can have proposed it for any reason other than to prolong Granada’s civil war.
    For the invaders, the most important success of the succeeding campaigns was the capture of Málaga in 1487. The effort was costly. As Andrés de Bernáldez, priest and chronicler, lamented, “[T]he tax-gatherers squeezed the villagers because of the expenses of that siege.” The rewards were considerable. Castile’s armies in the war zone could be supplied by sea. The loss of the port impeded the Granadines’ communications with their coreligionists across the sea. The whole western portion of the kingdom had now fallen to the invaders.
    Even in the face of Ferdinand’s advance, the Moors could not end their internal differences. But Boabdil’s partial defeat of el Zagal and return to Granada, with Christian help, had the paradoxical effect of strengthening Moorish resistance, although Boabdil’s was the weaker character and weaker party. Once Granada was in his power, he found it impossible to honor his treaty with Ferdinand and surrender the city into Christian hands. Nor was it in his interests to do so once el Zagal was out of the running.
    By 1490 nothing but the city of Granada was left, occupying a reputedly impregnable position, but highly vulnerable to exhaustion by siege. Yet at every stage the war seemed to take longer than the monarchs expected. In January 1491 they set a deadline of the end of March for their final triumphant entry into Granada, but the siege began in earnest only in April. At the end of the year they were still in their makeshift camp nearby. Meanwhile the defenders had made many successful sorties, seizing livestock and grain-laden wagons,and the besiegers had suffered many misadventures. Hundreds of tents in their camp burned in a conflagration in July, when a candle flame in the queen’s tent caught a flapping curtain. The monarchs had to evacuate their luxurious pavilion.

    The Kingdom of the Iberian Peninsula, 1492.
    The militant mood of the city’s inhabitants limited Boabdil’s freedom. The ferocity with which they opposed the Christians determined his policy. His efforts, formerly exerted in the Spaniards’ favor, were now bent on the defense of Granada. There was no way of supplying the city with food, and by the