A history of Granada, as small and sweet as a pomegranate seed

 

 

        In the beginning, there was Ilbyr. A wandering tribe, whose name we shall never know, settled atop the steep hill on the west bank of the river, overlooking the great plain, its huts of stone and branches huddled inside circle of rough walls. When the Romans came, they established their military outpost and civic buildings on the foundations of the citadel, and called it Iliberis. But even before the arrival of the Romans, a group of Jews, roaming the Western Mediterranean in search of a home, settled on the hill on the other bank of the river.

        They also protected their town with a castle and gave it a mysterious name which has come down to us as Granada. When the Arabs swept across the ruins of the imperial colony of Hispania in the early 8th century, they took over the old Roman fort from the barbarians who then ruled most of the peninsula, and the name of the place became arabized as Elvira.

        The town on the east bank they called Garnata-al-Yahud, Granada of the Jews, and it was this name which predominated when the two cities were merged into one. For over five centuries, the Arab city was centered around the fortress, or Alcazaba. But as the displaced Christians continued in their drive to rid Spain of the Moors, the circle began to close around the Islamic rulers of al-Andalus, as they called Spain.

        When the greatest city of the region, Cordoba, fell, in 1236, its people fled to Granada. Seville soon followed. This influx of wealth made it necessary to buildmuch larger and stronger fortress, and the best place was the long ridge on the other side of the river, on the lowest and southernmost part of which stood the fortress of the Jews, which was now rebuilt and enclosed in the walls of the new “alcazaba”.

        It is said that because the huge square towers were sheathed in reddish clay which glowed iridescently in the rays of the setting sun, they became known to the people as The Red Castle - Calat al-Hamra, literally “Castle the Red”. A century later, a new series of attacks by the Christians pushed the frontier even further south, and more refugees fled to Granada, confirming it as the richest and most important city in Moorish Spain.

        This was when the kings of the Nasrid dynasty began building a magnificent palace to the north of the Alhambra’s military towers, with halls and gardens of unequalled elegance and luxury where the sultan and his harem could enjoy the final years of their power. By the end of the 15th century, the monarchs of Spain, Isabel and Ferdinand, who had by marrying united the Christian kingdoms, set out to rid the extreme south of the peninsula of the Mohammedans.

        After six years of sieges and battles, in 1492, Granada and its great palace the Alhambra fell, ending Islamic rule in Spain forever. Much of what the Moors had built in the city disappeared with them. The short-lived flow of gold from America first made Spain rich - leading to the replacement of many of Granada’s Moorish and Renaissance monuments with baroque constructions - and then ruined its economy, leaving the country once more vulnerable o foreign invasion, which came at the beginning of the 19th century in the form of Napoleon.

        When the French troops were forced to withdraw, they bitterly sacked and in some cases destroyed Granada’s treasures, even attempting to blow up the Alhambra. And just a few decades after they had been driven out, the Spanish government, influenced by the anti-clerical ideas which the French had sown throughout Europe, confiscated most of the Catholic Church ’s enormous landholdings. The result was the mutilation and abandonment of churches and monasteries everywhere.

        At about the same time, the river which flows through the old city, the Darro, began to be covered to create an avenue, from the foot of the Alhambra, at Plaza Nueva, all the way to its meeting with the River Genil, doing away with all of the city’s arched stone bridges, except the two which still survive.

        The universal fascination with Granada was born with the 19th century “romantic” passion for ruined medieval castles, towering pinnacles and mysterious legend - the “flight into the past” of the discontents of the Industrial Revolution. This posture was, and still is so popular that the journals, tales and etchings which the travellers of the period produced did much to create the poetic image we cherish of the city today.

        In the 1920’s Granada became the center of dynamic artistic movement, the best known personalities of which were poet Federico García Lorca and composer Manuel de Falla. In their words and music they paid eloquent homage to their Andalucian roots, and added considerably to Granada’s fame and magnetic appeal around the world.

from "Granada, City of My Dreams", by Lorenzo Bohme

Home page of ¡Viva Granada!