Granada Pdf

[Llanque Mazurek]

Thearea was settled since ancient times by Iberians, Romans, and Visigoths. The current settlement became a major city of Al-Andalus in the 11th century during the Zirid Taifa of Granada.[5] In the 13th century it became the capital of the Emirate of Granada under Nasrid rule, the last Muslim-ruled state in the Iberian Peninsula. Granada was conquered in 1492 by the Catholic Monarchs and progressively transformed into a Christian city over the course of the 16th century.[6]

The Alhambra, a medieval Nasrid citadel and palace, is located in Granada. It is one of the most famous monuments of Islamic architecture[7] and one of the most visited tourist sites in Spain.[8][9] Islamic-period influence and Moorish architecture are also preserved in the Albaicn neighborhood and other medieval monuments in the city.[10] The 16th century also saw a flourishing of Mudjar architecture and Renaissance architecture,[11] followed later by Baroque and Churrigueresque styles.[12][13] The University of Granada has an estimated 47,000 undergraduate students spread over five different campuses in the city. The pomegranate (in Spanish, granada) is the heraldic device of Granada.

Granada's historical name in the Arabic language was غرناطة (Ġarnāṭa).[14][15][16][17] Both the name's meaning and origin are uncertain and have been debated.[18][19] The toponym definitely existed prior to the Zirid period in the 11th century.[19] It probably first appeared in the 9th century[18] and it is found in Arabic sources from the 10th century.[20]

The region surrounding what today is Granada has been populated since at least 5500 BC.[14] Archeological artifacts found in the city indicate that the site of the city, including the area around the present-day avenue of Gran Va de Coln, was inhabited since the Bronze Age. The most ancient ruins found in the area belong to an oppidum called Ilturir, founded by the Iberian Bastetani tribe around 650 BC.[18] The name Elibyrge is also attested in reference to this area.[14] This settlement became later known as Iliberri or Iliberis.[14][23][18] In 44 BC Iliberis became a Roman colony and in 27 BC it became a Roman municipium named Florentia Iliberritana ('Flourishing Iliberri').[18][23]

The identification of present-day Granada with the Roman-era Iliberis and the historical continuity between the two settlements has long been debated by scholars.[24][25][23] Modern archeological digs on the Albaicn hill have uncovered finds demonstrating the presence of a significant Roman town on that site.[23] Little is known, however, about the history of the city in the period between the end of the Roman era and the 11th century.[23] An important Christian synod circa 300 AD, the Synod of Elvira, took place near this area (the name Elvira being derived from the name Iliberri), but there is no concrete archeological or documentary evidence establishing the exact location of the meeting. It may have taken place in the former Roman town or it may have taken place somewhere in the surrounding region, which was known as Elvira.[23]

The Zirids built their citadel and palace, known as the al-Qaṣaba al-Qadīma ("Old Citadel"), on the hill now occupied by the Albaicn neighborhood.[5][10] It was connected to two smaller fortresses on the Sabika hill (site of the future Alhambra) and Mauror hill to the south.[10] The city around it grew during the 11th century to include the Albaicn, the Sabika, the Mauror, and a part of the surrounding plains. The city was fortified with walls encompassing an area of approximately 75 hectares.[5] The northern part of these walls, near the Albaicin citadel, have survived to the present day, along with two of its gates: Bāb al-Unaydar (now called Puerta Monaita in Spanish) and Bāb al-Ziyāda (now known as Arco de las Pesas or Puerta Nueva).[10][5] The city and its residences were supplied with water through an extensive network of underground cisterns and pipes.[5][28] On the Darro River, along the wall connecting the Zirid citadel with the Sabika hill, was a sluice gate called Bāb al-Difāf ("Gate of the Tambourines"), which could be closed or opened to control the flow of the river and retain water if necessary.[b][29][30] The nearby Bauelo, a former hammam (bathhouse), also likely dates from this time, as does the former minaret of a mosque in the Albaicn, now part of the Church of San Jos.[10]

Under the Zirid kings Habbus ibn Maksan and Badis, the most powerful figure was the Jewish administrator known as Samuel ha-Nagid (in Hebrew) or Isma'il ibn Nagrilla (in Arabic). Samuel was a highly educated member of the former elites of Cordoba, who fled that city after the outbreak of the Fitna. He eventually found his way to Granada, where Habbus ibn Maksan appointed him his secretary in 1020 and entrusted him with many important responsibilities, including tax collection. Under Badis, he even took charge of the army.[31] During this period, the Muslim king was looked upon as a mainly symbolic figurehead. Granada was the center of Jewish Sephardi culture and scholarship. According to Daniel Eisenberg:

After Samuel's death, his son Joseph took over after his position but proved to lack his father's diplomacy, bringing on the 1066 Granada massacre,[31] which ended the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain.[citation needed]

Partly due to the heavy tributary payments to Castile, Granada's economy specialized in the trade of high-value goods.[5] Integrated within the European mercantile network, the ports of the kingdom fostered intense trading relations with the Genoese, but also with the Catalans, and to a lesser extent, with the Venetians, the Florentines, and the Portuguese.[50] It provided connections with Muslim and Arab trade centers, particularly for gold from sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb, and exported silk and dried fruits produced in the area.[41]

Despite its frontier position, Granada was also an important Islamic intellectual and cultural center, especially in the time of Muhammad V, with figures such as Ibn Khaldun and Ibn al-Khatib serving in the Nasrid court.[37][51] Ibn Battuta, a famous traveller and historian, visited the Emirate of Granada in 1350. He described it as a powerful and self-sufficient kingdom in its own right, although frequently embroiled in skirmishes with the Kingdom of Castile. In his journal, Ibn Battuta called Granada the "metropolis of Andalusia and the bride of its cities."[52]

On 2 January 1492, the last Muslim ruler in Iberia, Emir Muhammad XII, known as "Boabdil" to the Spanish, surrendered complete control of the Emirate of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs (Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile), after the last episode of the Granada War.

The 1492 capitulation of the Kingdom of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs is one of the most significant events in Granada's history. It brought the demise of the last Muslim-controlled polity in the Iberian Peninsula. The terms of the surrender, outlined in the Treaty of Granada at the end of 1491, explicitly allowed the Muslim inhabitants, known as mudjares, to continue unmolested in the practice of their faith and customs. This had been a traditional practice during Castilian (and Aragonese) conquests of Muslim cities since the takeover of Toledo in the 11th century.[53] The terms of the surrender pressured Jewish inhabitants to convert or leave within three years,[54] but this provision was quickly superseded by the Alhambra Decree, issued only a few months later on March 31, which instead forced all Jews in Spain to convert or be expelled within four months.[55][56] Those who converted became known as conversos (converts). This move, along with the progressive erosion of other guarantees provided by the surrender treaty, raised tensions and fears within the remaining Muslim community during the 1490s.[57] Many of the city's affluent Muslims and its traditional ruling classes emigrated to North Africa in the early years after the conquest, but these early emigrants numbered only a few thousand, with the rest of the population unable to afford leaving.[55][e]

Over the course of the 16th century, Granada took on an ever more Catholic and Castilian character, as immigrants arrived from other regions of Castile, lured by the promise of economic opportunities in the newly conquered city.[60] At the time of the city's surrender in 1492 it had a population of 50,000 which included only a handful of Christians (mostly captives), but by 1561 (the year of the first royal census of the city) the population was composed of over 30,000 Christian immigrants and approximately 15,000 moriscos.[60] After 1492 the city's first churches had been installed in some converted mosques.[f] The vast majority of the city's remaining mosques were subsequently converted into churches during and after the mass conversions of 1500.[61] In 1531, Charles V founded the University of Granada on the site of the former madrasa built by Yusuf I.[18]

During the 17th century, despite the importance of immigration,[70] the population of the city stagnated at about 55,000, contrary to the trend of population increase experienced in the rural areas of the Kingdom of Granada,[71] where the hammer of depopulation caused by the expulsion of the moriscos had taken a far greater toll in the previous century. The 17th-century demographic stagnation in the city and overall steady population increase in the wider kingdom went in line with the demographic disaster experienced throughout the century in the rest of the Crown of Castile.[72] The city was overshadowed in importance by other cities including Seville and the capital, Madrid.[73]

Between 1810 and 1812 Granada was occupied by Napoleon's army during the Peninsular War.[73] The French troops occupied the Alhambra as a fortified position and caused significant damage to the monument. Upon evacuating the city, they attempted to dynamite the whole complex, successfully blowing up eight towers before the remaining fuses were disabled by Spanish soldier Jos Garcia, thus saving what remains today.[74] In 1830 Washington Irving lived in Granada and wrote his Tales of the Alhambra, which revived some international interest in southern Spain and in its Islamic-era monuments.[75]

3a8082e126