The Moor's Last Stand by Drayson Elizabeth;

Author:Drayson, Elizabeth;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 2017-12-13T05:00:00+00:00

– 7 –

Exile

In 1931 a collection of essays written in the form of alternative histories entitled If it Had Happened Otherwise was published. Winston Churchill was one of the essayists, along with the barrister and popular historical writer Philip Guedalla, who contributed a witty and perceptive item with the title ‘If the Moors in Spain had won …’. In the scenario imagined by Guedalla, Ferdinand and Isabella abandon their attempt to conquer Granada and escape across the Sierra Nevada to the seaport of Motril, where they embark for Valencia. A peace treaty is signed with Boabdil at Baeza in 1493, and Granada becomes a great European centre of enlightenment and culture, enriched by the finest intellects in Spain, who founded the great University of Granada under the liberal and tolerant Boabdil III. Remarking on the irreparable loss to Europe, had a less cautious strategy exposed Granada to the ravages of a crude and uncultivated conqueror, Guedalla envisages the city at its apogee in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when its enlightened policies are respected throughout Europe. As the Moorish kingdom’s reputation grows down the centuries, The Times newspaper of 1915 reports the historic spectacle of the British king, dressed in Moorish costume as a mark of respect, awaiting the arrival of his oldest ally, the sultan of Granada, wearing full colonel’s uniform of his own regiment, the Dragoon Guards, who has leapt to arms to help in the Great War effort.

In this imaginative exploration of what might have been, Islamic Granada survives as a separate political entity, weakening Spain but fostering a liberal humanist brand of Islam. Granada becomes an important military and political power and a cultural beacon. Distant though it is from the historical reality, Guedalla’s version of events vividly highlights what was lost on 2 January 1492. Christopher Columbus remembered seeing the Christian flags hoisted high on the towers of the Alhambra on that day at the moment when the city became the site of transfer of cultural, religious and political power from one unique medieval society to another. It was a regime change which anticipated innumerable similar capitulations by non-Christian people to Spaniards in the Americas which Columbus was about to discover. Far from falling into a decline and dying in grief at his failed attempt at conquest, as in Guedalla’s fantasy, the triumphant King Ferdinand expressed his elation in the letters he wrote to the various ruling bodies of Andalusia announcing the surrender of the city. On the day itself, he wrote to the councillors and all the people of Murcia:

I write to inform you that it has pleased Our Lord, after enormous effort, expense and fatigue in our kingdoms, and the spilling of blood of our native subjects, to bring the war that I have engaged in with the Moors of the kingdom and city of Granada to a happy conclusion. That city, held and occupied for over 780 years, today, 2 of January of this year 1492, has come under our power and

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.