• Book Beginning
  • Acknowledgments
  • Sources & Bibliography
  • Mary Ames Mitchell

The Conquest of Granada

By the end of the year 1491, Christopher Columbus was in at attendance at the Spanish court in Malága, from where, since 1480, the Catholic Monarchs had been waging war on the last stronghold of the Muslims in Iberia, Granada. Ferdinand and Isabella were determined to expel the Moors from the peninsula once and for all. Since their marriage in 1469, they had been sending Isabella’s Castilian armies, aided by King Ferdinand’s navy, guns, and money into Al-Andalusia in an effort to topple the Muslim fortresses. The armies typically left in spring, but were home by winter.

Since 1417, the leadership in Granada had been weakening. The Muslim leaders suffered succession problems of their own. But in Spain, forces were unifying under Ferdinand and Isabella. Their combined armies had adopted the large Genoese guns that could shoot stone balls and demolish stone fortifications.

The Spanish finally won. On January 2, 1492, the Emir of Granada, Mohammad XII, known as King Boabdil, stood in front of his exquisite palace called Alhambra and bowed in surrender to King Ferdinand, Queen Isabella, and fourteen-year-old Crown Prince Juan. The monarchs stood proudly at the head of their combined armies.

Christopher Columbus was also standing there, watching from among the audience. He later wrote, “I saw Your Highnesses’ royal banners placed by force of arms on the towers of the Alhambra, … and I saw the Moorish king come out to the city gates and kiss Your Highnesses’ royal hands and those of My Lord the Prince.”(1)

The Catholic Monarchs immediately demanded that all infidels – Muslims and Jews – convert to Christianity. Some of them left the Iberian peninsula forever. Those who refused were enslaved, shipped off, and sold around the Mediterranean. Others were put to death. Ferdinand and Isabella had ended the 700-year-long Reconquista and begun a new Inquisition.

Notes

  1. Quote from Douglas Hunter’s book The Race to the New World: Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, and a Lost history of Discovery, Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press, New York, NY 1001 p. 42.

Next Article: Columbus’ New Proposal

Contents

Welcome
Notes on Discussing Time
Knowledge Ancient World
Technology Migrates West
The Romans and Latin
Iberia, Brittania, Fall of Rome
Judaism
Christianity
600s The Rise of Islam
800s Christian Europe
County of Portugal

980s The Vikings
1000s Fight for Jerusalem
1143 Portugal’s Independence
1147 Second Crusade
1154 Al-Idrisi’s World Map
1170 Prince Madog of Wales
1187 Third to Fifth Crusades
1200s Mongolian Empire
The Silk Road
Herbs and Spices
Legend of Prester John
1271 Marco Polo
Volta do Mar
Mythical Atlantic Islands
Real Atlantic Islands
Ancient Texts Resurface
Through the Pillars of Hercules
Rise of Portuguese
The Order of Christ
Pedro and Inês
Black Death
1303 Knights Templar in America
14th Century Maps
Rihlas & Travelogues

Portugal, Castile, or England
The House of Avis
1400s Henry the Navigator
Age of Discovery Begins
Henry’s Navigation Center
Chinese Treasure Fleets
Royal Distractions
Cape Bojador
The Caravel
Tools for Navigation
The Astrolabe
1440s Beginning of Slave Trade
Western Land Sightings
1450 Fra Mauro Mappa Mundi
Claiming the Azores
Constantinople
Dinheiro – Portuguese Money
The Guinea Trade
Crossing the Equator
Polo & Toscanelli
Treaty of Alcáçovas-Toledo
The Carrack
Diogo Cão Reaches the Congo
The Rule of the Sun
Overland to Abyssinia
Christopher Columbus
Columbus’ Calculations
1480 Alonso Sanchez of Huelva

c1485 Columbus Leaves Portugal
1486 Pushing West from Azores
1487-88 Bartolomeu Dias
Portuguese Reach Calicut
1487 Columbus in Spain
Conquest of Granada
Columbus’ New Proposal
1492 Columbus’ 1st Voyage
Treaty of Tordesillas
1493 Columbus’ 2nd Voyage
Calculating Longitude
1495 King Manoel I
John Cabot
Nuremberg Connection
Cabot in England
1497-98
Cabot’s 1st & 2nd Voyages

1497-98 Vasco da Gama
Cabot’s Return
1498 Cabot’s 3rd Voyage
1498 Columbus’ 3rd Voyage
1499 William Weston
1499 The Corte-Reals
1500 Fernão Alvares Cabral
1502 Columbus’ 4th Voyage
Maps After Columbus
Loose Ends
Mysterious Dighton Rock

We invite your feedback. If you have any comments, suggestions, or corrections, please email them to Mary.
Please tell me to which page you are referring. Thanks.

©2015 Mary Ames Mitchell. All rights reserved.
Book Beginning | Acknowledgments | Sources & Bibliography | Mary Ames Mitchell

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